I’m an author, journalist, and editor from Dallas, Texas. I’m the managing editor of Inkstick Media and a cofounder and contributing editor at Long Road Magazine, which publishes literary reportage on borders and borderlands. I also write fiction.

Since I started out in journalism in 2011, I’ve reported from more than 15 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. I’ve written about migration, the rise of the far right, armed conflict, labor rights, humanitarian catastrophes, poverty, and environmental disasters, among other issues. I’ve lived in Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, Qatar, and Greece.

For nearly two years, starting in February 2021, I worked as the lead news editor at the Dallas Observer. Between 2015 and 2019, I worked for Al Jazeera English, first as a reporter and later as a senior reporter. Before that, I worked as acting managing editor at Syria Deeply.

My reporting has also appeared in print or online at New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, TIME, New Lines Magazine, Hyphen Online, Pacific Standard, The National, In These Times, Politico EU, The Public Eye, The Guardian, Slate, OpenCanada, Columbia Journalism Review, Vice News, LitHub, CrimeReads, Daily Beast, Deutsche Welle, Middle East Eye, and others. 

For a while, I also covered local news on the city of Garland, Texas, for The Dallas Morning News.

My first book, Alerta! Alerta! Snapshots of Europe's Anti-Fascist Struggle, was published in November 2018.

In February 2022, Melville House published my second book, The Marauders: Standing Up to Vigilantes in the American Borderlands, which Publishers Weekly has described as “a fascinating and often harrowing portrait of a community in the crosshairs.” CrimeReads picked The Marauders as a notable title in its list of best nonfiction books in 2022.

I’ve given book talks and participated on author panels at the L.A. Times Festival of Books, the Tucson Festival of Books, the French Institute in Athens, Greece, and at bookstores and universities around the U.S. In 2023, The de Groot Foundation picked my forthcoming book, You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave, as a finalist for the Lando Grant on migration writing. Ahead of St. Patrick’s Day 2023, Axios Dallas (for reasons still unclear to me) picked me as one of its “favorite Patricks with ties to Texas.”

My short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming at literary journals including The Barcelona Review, Porter House Review, Five South, Peatsmoke Journal, Cleaver Magazine, The Coachella Review, The Broadkill Review, Cowboy Jamboree, Flash Fiction Magazine, BULL, South 85 Journal, This Great Society, and MonkeyBicycle. My short story “Rent Money” took third prize in Pithead Chapel’s 2021 Larry Brown Short Story Award. Another story, “General Holy War,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023. The de Groot Foundation picked my yet-unpublished short story collection as a finalist for its 2024 Courage to Write competition. I have an MFA in creative writing from the University of Nebraska - Omaha, and a BA from the University of North Texas.

Contact me at: patsjournalist (at) outlook (dot) com