Before everything, I was a reader.
Then a writer and a teacher. But always a reader.

I have helped motivate, support, and challenge others for the better part of four decades in the classroom and through the written word. I am a problem-solver—my philosophy is that we can tackle just about anything as long as we have the right tools, which include education and hope. I do my best to supply those.

I am the author of Burn Scars: A Memoir of the Land and Its Loss, Surviving Triple-Negative Breast Cancer and co-author of The Magazine from Cover to Cover.  At Drake University, I was the E.T. Meredith Distinguished Professor of Journalism, the director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and architect of the university’s magazine journalism program. 

I blog at Psychology Today and I have a breast cancer blog, Positives About Negative, focusing on triple-negative breast cancer. I have written health and lifestyle articles for more than four decades for national publications such as Cure, Better Homes and Gardens, Diabetic Living, and Balanced Living.

I like spinning tales so much that when I retired from teaching at Drake University, they created the Patricia Prijatel Storyteller Award for students who create “journalism that informs and inspires.”

I try to help people make sense of things, to encourage them on whatever journey they embark on, and to be a friend. 

My last name, by the way, is the Slovenian word for friend.