A freelance editor and author, Tricia Brown was born and raised in Kankakee County, Illinois. In 1978, she relocated to Fairbanks, Alaska, where she lived and worked for more than two decades. She received a B.A. in journalism from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 1983 and has since served as the features editor at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Anchorage Daily News and the editor in chief of Alaska magazine. She served as the events coordinator for Anchorage Youth for Christ in addition to working as a graphic artist for the Alaska Sea Grant program.
In 1996, Brown earned a M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Alaska Anchorage and began working as a full-time writer and editor for a number of publishers, including Discovery Channel/Insight Guides and WHERE: Alaska & Yukon magazine. In 1999, Brown began working full-time as the acquisitions editor with Alaska Northwest Books, an imprint of the Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company, in Portland, Oregon.
In the course of her career, Brown developed a deep interest in Alaska's Indian and Eskimo populations, and she began travelling by small plane to the remote areas of the state to learn and write about the native communities. Considered an authority on Alaskan history, native cultures, and natural history, Brown frequently travels to Alaska for research and speaking engagements and is currently working with the University of Alaska Anchorage to develop web content for children on Alaskan history and literature.
Brown has won numerous awards, including the 2005 Contribution to Literacy in Alaska Award and the 1995 International Regional Magazine Association Award for Alaska magazine. She has authored more than a dozen books for children and adults, and her children's book Children of the Midnight Sun: Young Native Voices of Alaska received the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Award, Independent Publisher Book Award, and was chosen by Parenting magazine as one of the Best Books of 1999.
An avid quilter, Brown is the vice president of the Columbia River Piecemakers Quilt Guild in Oregon and was a featured instructor for a weeklong quilting cruise up Alaska's Inside Passage from Seattle. The mother of two adult daughters and the grandmother of five, Brown resides in Scappoose, Oregon, with her husband.