Associate Professor Patricia Raybon
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of Colorado at Boulder
1511 University Ave.
478 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309
Patricia.Raybon@Colorado.edu
303-492-4188 phone
303-492-0969 fax

Associate Professor Patricia Raybon (currently on leave) started her newspaper career as a city desk reporter for The Denver Post. She made feature writing her specialty, however, and worked as a features reporter at The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountains News, where she won many awards for feature writing before returning to The Denver Post in the late 1980s as Sunday magazine editor. During her newspaper career, Raybon's articles won the Sweepstakes Award from  the Associated Press of Colorado, the General Reporting Award from the Society of Professional Journalists' Colorado chapter, the "Gold" Helen Carringer National Mental Health Journalism Award from the National Mental Health Association and several first-place awards for feature writing from the National Federation of Press Women and its affiliate,  Colorado Press Women. She is the author of two critically acclaimed books, My First White Friend (Viking/Penguin, 1996), on racial forgiveness, which won the prestigious Christopher Award for "artistic excellence affirming the highest values of the human spirit," and her latest book, I Told the Mountain to Move (SaltRiver/an imprint of Tyndale House, 2005), a spiritual memoir on her struggle to learn how to pray. Her personal essays on faith, family and culture have been published in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, USA Today, USA Weekend, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News, Country Living, In Touch Magazine, Guideposts, and in such writing textbooks as The Prentice Hall Guide for College Writers, Guide to Writing Magazine Nonfiction, Models for Writers: Short Essays for Composition and The Writing Process, among others. Raybon’s essays have aired regularly on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition and she has been a guest on such national TV and radio programs as "Today" on NBC, "Tavis Smiley" on PBS, Pacifica Radio, "Talk of the Nation" on NPR, Moody Midday Connection, among many others. Raybon joined the journalism faculty at the University of Colorado in 1991 and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in magazine and feature writing and news reporting. Her workshops, on writing and on diversity topics, have been presented to church, school, government and medical audiences around the country. Raybon holds a BA in journalism from the Ohio State University and an MA in journalism from the University of Colorado.