WELCOME TO MY WEBSITE! Here is some information about me.
I was born and raised in Johnstown, New York, about an hour west of Albany. My early work experience included blackedging in a Johnstown glove factory, babysitting, and waitressing in a Lake George, New York, restaurant. I earned a BA from the University of New York at Albany and an MA from Columbia University, both in English. After teaching two years at the University of Colorado, I earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin in English with a minor in history. My teaching career since has been at the University of Georgia, where I taught literature and writing. I am married to a fellow UGA professor, Hubert McAlexander; we have one son.
In high school and college, I loved writing stories for my sister and our friends, but I focused on academic writing while I was in graduate school and teaching. Now retired, I’ve turned back to that first love, fiction. My short story “Falling” was runner-up in the Atlanta Writers Club’s 2021 Terry Kay Prize for Fiction, and was later published in Knot Magazine (https://www.knotliteraturemagazine.com/patricia-mcalexander) although sadly, this site is no longer available. I ’ve published four contemporary romantic-suspense novels with The Wild Rose Press, Stranger in the Storm, Shadows of Doubt, The Student in Classroom 6, and The Last Golden Isle. My most recent book, Second Wives is historical fiction inspired by three generations of my ancestors. For details about these novels as well as my academic writing, click on the other pages in this website. Second Wives and The Last Golden Isle are combined in the first page; The Student in Classroom 6 is on the second; for Shadows of Doubt and Stranger in the Storm, and a list of my selected Academic Writing, click on the page labeled "More"; additional page titles will then come up for you to select. At the bottom of the pages about my novels, I include one or more photos of scenes that inspired scenes in the novel.
