Patricia Fieldsteel profile

Patricia Fieldsteel was born in Hanover, New Hampshire, and grew up in a stifling Long Island suburb to which she has never returned. She lived for 35 years in New York's Greenwich Village and since 2002 has made her home in Northern Provence. She attended Smith College and has worked as a sap gatherer on a maple syrup farm in Vermont, as well as in the children's book department of a major New York Publisher.Among many other jobs, she has worked as an outreach worker and HIV-counselor to street prostitutes in New York City; a cater-waiter and restaurant hostess; teacher of Torah; gardener; pastoral counselor in a nursing home and personal assistant to a major New York City dance critic and cultural impresario. She has had an award-winning column in THE VILLAGER newspaper since 1997 and has also published in THE NEW YORK TIMES. She is an animal-lover par excellance and is divinely happy in Provence, though from time to time she misses the opera, ethnic food and Law & Order reruns. This is her story.