Patricia Schultheis

Snowflakes in a Blizzard is a blog dedicated to helping writers , especially a new, unknown writers, get noticed. .

I'm honored that Snowflakes in a Blizzard featured my memoir, A Balanced Life. And that I'm in such good company.

Biography

The second of three daughters of a Polish-American family, Patricia Schultheis grew in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She was stricken by polio when she was six years old and became a moody, introspective child who found great solace in reading. Her inward nature, as well as her Catholic-school education and parents' encouragement to "read, read, read," provided the skills and intellectual discipline for her to become a writer, while Bridgeport's hurly burly social dynamics supplied fodder for her natural curiosity.

After graduating from Albertus Magnus College 1965, she moved to Baltimore where she taught school, and where she met the young history teacher who became her husband. Two sons soon followed and exploring Baltimore's became the new family's entertainment.

Like Bridgeport, Baltimore has a rich urban texture, but Baltimore's civic code of decorum is more deeply inscribed, more informed by history, and more poisonous when violated. This tacitly accepted code provided the foundation for the stories of St. Bart's Way, Patricia's award-wining story collection.

While holding a variety of publishing and public relations positions and raising her family, Patricia built a considerable free-lance portfolio of news articles, features and opinion pieces for magazines and newspapers. But her older sister's untimely death turned her focus to fiction. In her mid-fifties, she submitted "After the Service," the fourth story she'd ever written, to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and took her acceptance as proof that she had a talent for storytelling. "After the Service" eventually was published in The Distillery and is now included in St. Bart's Way. Previously to that, her pictorial history, Baltimore's Lexington Market, was published by Arcadia Publishing, and in 2018 her memoir, A Balanced Life, was published by All Things That Matter Press.

Patricia has taught in the Odyssey Program of Johns Hopkins University, from where she has two graduate degrees: a Master of Liberal Arts, earned in 1973; and a Master of Arts in Writing, earned in 2006. A widow, she continues to live in Baltimore.

Links, Publications and Honors

LINKS

Patricia is interviewed for the blog, Betty Bolte Musings

https://bettybolte.net/2022/04/22/getting-to-know-patricia-schultheis-author-fiction-nonfiction-historical-baltimore-mustread-story/amp/

Patricia presents a session on memoir at the 2021 Washington Independent Review of Book's writing conference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T_dU2vv5n8

Patricia presents her thoughts on making a character "likable" or not.

https://wordstowritebypodcast.com/podcast/character-driven-plot-plus-dialog/

Patricia reads from her award-winning essay "Anonymous Told Me So" at the Soul-Making Award ceremony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLjzAucL5VQ

"What the World Needs Now," a brief essay about widowhood and ducks.

http://www.spankthecarp.com/issue58_schultheis.html

"Pitiful": a story about the restoration of a house and two lost souls. "Pitiful" originally was published in the Alaska Quarterly Review.

https://aqreview.org/pitiful/

"The Other Betty" was originally published in the Bryant Literary Review and is included in Patrricia's award-winning collection of stories titled St. Bart's Way.

http://bryantliteraryreview.org/publications/blr-volume-10/

"Downward Drifting," published in Fiction in 2008, explores the impact of war over the decades of an ordinary housewife's life.

http://www.fictioninc.com/excerpts-from-the-magazine/tag/patricia+schultheis

"The Counter-Mince Move," a Christmas story about memory and sedition, was published in Edify.

http://www.edifyfiction.com/uploads/4/4/2/9/44290661/xmas2017_pdf.pdf

"Keeping Cool and With Each Other" was published on the op-ed page of The Baltimore Sun on July 22, 2019.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0722-diversee-skaters-20190722-d22otvwbdbcfvfeckgwfilxwo4-story.html

Below is a link to Snowflakes in a Blizzard, a blog promoting new writers who might otherwise be lost like a snowflake in a blizzard.

https://snowflakesarise.wordpress.com/

Patricia writes fiction and creative nonfiction, and her work has been published in journals featuring both genres. She also writes book reviews.

FICTION

She has had thirty short stories published in national and international literary journals, including The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Litchfield Review, Left Curve, Scribble, The Potomac Review, Fiction, Kentucky Review, The Dalhousie Review as well as others. Her work as been included in anthologies that also featured stories by such writers as Alice McDermott and Annie Proulx. In 2015,Washington Writers' Publishing House awarded its prize for fiction and published Patricia's story collection titled St. Bart's Way. Previously St. Bart's Way had been named a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor and Snake Nation awards.

NONFICTION

Patricia has been a regular contributor to the op-ed pages of The Baltimore Sun for 50 years. Her essays also have been published by The Washington Post, The Chattahoochee Review, Troika, Muse and Stone, Under the Sun, Memoirs Ink, Winning Writers, Bluestem, and Spank the Carp. In 2018, her memoir A Balanced Life was published by All Things That Matter Press.

AWARDS and HONORS

2022, Finalist, "Sex with a Blind Man," The Tobias Wolff Award, Bellingham Review
2021, Second Place, Flash Fiction, This Thing With Sticks Soul-Making Contest, League of American Pen Women, San Francisco Branch
2021, Second Place, Short Story In the Ullage, Soul-Making Contest, League of American Pen Women, San Francisco Branch
2021, Finalist, Story Collection, Apple, Key, Cross, Willow Springs, Spokane Prize
2021, Finalist, Story Collection, Something Sensed; Someone Summoned, Steel Toe Books
2021, Finalist, Flash Fiction, "This Thing with Sticks," New Millennium Writings.
2021, Finalist, What Child Is This? Novel Slices Competition
2020, Winner, nonfiction, Soul-Making Literary Competition
2020, Finalist, fiction Wild Woman Review, TulipTree Publishers
2019, Finalist, fiction New Millennium Writings
2018, Quarter-Finalist for Screen Craft Cinematic Book Competition, What Child Is This?
2016, Finalist, flash fiction New Millennium Writings
2016 Finalist, story collection Willow Springs Editions
2015 Finalist Dana Award for short fiction
2015 Winner, fiction Washington Writers Publishing House
2015 Finalist, story collection Willow Springs Editions
2014 Finalist, fiction, Tobias Wolff Award, Bellingham Review
2014 Fellow, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
· 2013 First-place award, sports essay, Winning Writers
2011 Third–place award, memoir, Memoirs Ink
2010 Third-place award, nonfiction, Soul-Making Literary Competition
2010 Fellow, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts
2008. Finalist, The Flannery O'Connor Award for fiction
2008 Finalist, Snake Nation Press Award for fiction
2006 Award recipient for fiction, the Fitzgerald Literary Conference,
2006 Honorable Mention, Best Lead Writing Contest
2005. Finalist, fiction, The Iowa Review
2005 Finalist, essay, The Chattahoochee Review
2004 Finalist, fiction, The Litchfield Review

MEMBERSHIPS

Elected member, The National Book Critics Circle
Elected member, The Authors Guild

Selected Works

Fiction

St. Bart's Way

This prize-winning short story collection was published in 2015 by Washington Writers Publishing House. The characters on this upper middle-class Baltimore street reach a point in their lives where they question the commitments they have made, the prices they have paid, and the lies they have told to themselves and others in order to maintain the upright appearance suggested by owning a house on St. Bart's Way.

History

Baltimore’s Lexington Market

This lively and detailed pictorial history captures the essence of a grand Baltimore institution founded by a Revolutionary War hero. Filled with fascinating pictures and informative text Baltimore's Lexington Market relates how national political leaders, superstar sports figures, circus elephants, and ordinary folk have found something to satisfy their hunger at this beloved public market for over two hundred years.

MEMOIR

A Balanced Life

Published by All Things That Matter Press in 2018, A Balanced Life is a memoir that uses ice skating as a metaphor for life. Ever since her uncle Leo gave her a pair of second-hand skates when she was eleven years old, the author has been captivated by the sport's promise of speed and grace. Over the course of nine chapters, she explores how the sport's thrall conitinues to grip her, as well as the nature of time, loss, talent and commitment. Told in a lyrical, recursive style, A Balanced Life examines the impact of sweeping sociological changes on the author's life as well as the evolution of her own values as she ages.

"Reading A Balanced Life is a lot like the feeling I got talking to my parents about their lives after I'd just watched Mad Men. Suddenly, their ordinary lives seemed much more interesting to me, because I'd just seen a brilliant contextualizing of the ordinary, making its relevance to the grand, sweeping scope of history clearer. Schultheis's memoir not only makes an ordinary life seem more extraordinary, it makes far-off and remote "big" history seem as close as the bus stop on the next street."

from Jacob Weber, author of Don't Wait To Be Called