Biography

Patricia Gill, writer, sociologist, educator and long time resident of Saint Croix, was born in Pleasantville, New York. After graduating from Hunter College in New York City and her marriage to a Peruvian, she was part of the diplomatic scene in Washington, Ottawa, Canada and Lima,Peru. She came to the Virgin Islands from Hollywood, where she had been working as a historical researcher and script writer for Wayne-Fellows, Inc. Her literary credits include a play, "Murder in the Embassy", which won an award in the Canadian Drama Festival, "Sabotaje en la Selva", the first full-length feature film produced in color in Latin America, and "The Liberators", a historical account of the Wars of Independence in Latin America, written for John Wayne.

In Peru, she was the English editor of "Caretas", a leading news periodical and wrote an influential series on the political consequences of petroleum legislation and the developing tuna industry. A paper written for admission to the doctoral program at Harvard University was later published by the Caribbean Research Institute under the title "The Moravian Mission to the African Slaves in the Danish West Indies, 1732- 1828". Her poetry has been published in recent issues of "The Caribbean Writer".

Dr.Patricia Gill (Murphy) received her Ph.D in the Philosophy of Education from the University of Connecticut. She has taught sociology at Vassar College, Latin American and Caribbean History and Spanish at the University of Connecticut and the University of the Virgin Islands, and Educational Problems of Developing Areas at Fairfield University Graduate School of Education. She is at present Co- Director of the Language Institute of Saint Croix.