Patricia de Villiers was born in Cape Town and was raised in various places across South Africa and Europe. After studying painting in Johannesburg, she fled the horror of being one of us under apartheid to live in London, returning to Cape Town in 1982. She has followed her nose (sometimes led by it) through a range of arts-related endeavours, especially community theatre, poster printing and popular education. After a 15-year side-turn into health management and the daily struggle to conduct herself in a professional manner, she now indulges her love of paint, clay and other muddy things, and ekes out a living as an illustrator. Contributing author to the Life Righting Collective’s This is how it is anthology.