Patricia Cornwell is the bestselling author of the Kay Scarpetta crime fiction series and other mystery thrillers. She has sold over 120 million books.
Born in Miami, she grew up in North Carolina. She earned her degree in English from Davidson College in 1979 and began working at the Charlotte Observer. She worked her way up from listing television programs to covering the police beat. After leaving the newspaper, she worked for six years at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia as a technical writer and then as a computer analyst. She also volunteered to work with the Richmond Police Department. Looking back at her experiences there, Patricia said, “When I was at college there were two things I vowed I’d never do. One was go to a funeral and the other was deal with computers. And then I ended up being a computer programmer in a morgue.”
But her work inspired her first Kay Scarpetta novel, Postmortem, which was eventually published while she was still working for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Postmortem would go on to win the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony, and Macavity awards, as well as the French Prix du Roman d’Aventure prize, all in a single year.
The forensic thriller series has influenced numerous entertainment properties, including television shows such as CSI Las Vegas and Cold Cases.
Patricia has received the Sherlock Award for best detective created by an American author, the Gold Dagger Award, the RBA Thriller Award, and the Medal of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for her contributions to literary and artistic development.
Patricia has also written several biographies, including an authorized biography of Ruth Bell Graham, wife of evangelist Billy Graham and several books on Jack the Ripper.
Patricia supports numerous charities and literacy programs, sometimes appears as a forensic consultant on CNN, and lives with her wife in Boston, Massachusetts.
