Who is Patti Digh?

It’s amazing how many cares disappear when one decides not to be something, but to be someone. –Coco Chanel

Patti Digh (pronounced “dye”) was born in a small town in North Carolina in the late 50s, spent the 60s listening to Bobby Sherman, wearing Peter Max hot pants, and campaigning to be class president; the 70s reading Tiger Beat magazine, playing Pee Wee football, idolizing Johnny Unitas, and living in Sri Lanka; the 80s at a Quaker college, living in Munich, listening to Joan Armatrading and Jethro Tull, surviving graduate school, and sailing around the world; the 90s filling up a passport, falling deeply in love, having her first child, and writing her first book; and this decade writing more books, having her second child, stalking Billy Collins and Johnny Depp, and finding her voice and passion at long last.

Patti has written two business books on global leadership and diversity, one named a Fortune magazine "best business book," and her comments have appeared on PBS, and in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, the New York Times, USAToday, the Washington Post, and London Financial Times, among other publications.

She is a co-founder of The Circle Project, a consulting and training firm that partners with organizations and the people in them to help them work more effectively and authentically together across difference. Patti was formerly the vice president of international and diversity programs for a large nonprofit organization.

She has dedicated her life to educating herself and others on the personal and societal costs of exclusion and discrimination.

Patti and her husband, John Ptak (aka Mr. Brilliant), live in the beautiful mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina, with their two daughters, Emma and Tess, their dog Blue, two cats whose furniture scratching proclivities don’t merit their being mentioned by name, and, until the recent Unfortunate Incident, a dwarf hamster named Maggie.

Patti's next book, LIFE IS A VERB: 37 Days To Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally will be published under the Skirt! Books imprint of Globe Pequot Press in the fall of 2008.

If you'd like to be among the very first to hear when it's available, and enter a drawing to receive a free, signed copy, please complete the form below. Your email address won't be used for any other reason than letting you know when the book emerges, with that fantastic smell of fresh ink and clean, crisp paper we all love so much.

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