Patrice (Rinaldo) Cassedy Biography (1953-)

Patrice Cassedy told SATA: "By becoming a lawyer I took what seems like a long detour from grade school, high school, and college days, when I knew in my heart that I would be a writer. Like many authors, I have a little box of 'firsts' from my childhood: first picture book, first short story, first poem. They are very imaginative and hardly show that for many years I would use my writings skills to compose memos and contracts as a lawyer working in companies that lend money. When I did write outside my legal jobs, I tackled articles because they were easier for a working mom to get a handle on. I also enjoyed writing romance novels (unpublished), because they are the work of women mostly and my jobs as a lawyer were dominated by men. My books for Lucent Press represent the merger of fact-gathering skills learned as a lawyer and my personal enjoyment of young people. My aim as a young adult author is to encourage young people to question (and therefore better understand) themselves and the world around them."

About her future projects, Cassedy told SATA, "While I do not expect to write an autobiography, themes and characters in my fictional work arise from my background as an Italian-American in a large family, my experiences growing up in Detroit during a time of terrifying racial tensions and life-affirming Motown music, the loss of a very dear sister while I was a law student, and what I have learned about marriage and family after happily raising two remarkable children with the man who courted me as a teenager."