Photo: Office of the Governor, Wyoming
Patricia Frolander is blessed to manage the family ranch in the Black Hills of Wyoming. She and her husband, Robert, who passed away in 2016, shared three children, seven grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, all of whom live close to the ranch. At this stage of her life she prefers the padded office chair at her desk.
Patricia's first book, Grassland Genealogy, was published in 2009 by Finishing Line Press. Her second book, Married Into It, was published by High Plains Press in 2013 and garnered the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum's coveted Wrangler Award, the WILLA Award, and High Plains Book Awards among others. Frolander's self-published chapbook, Between the West Pasture and Home, was distributed in October 2019.
Her most recent book, Second Wind, was published in 2020 by High Plains Press. After a period of loss and adjustment, Frolander "embraces a second wind" in these poems of validation and renewal, shown through community, family, nature, and ranch life. Sixty-one elegantly crafted poems divided into three sections (Old Pasture, Drought, and Fresh Grass) take us through the seasons of her life on a working ranch.
Her poetry has been widely published in numerous anthologies and featured in journals, magazines, and newspapers over the past twenty-five years. She won the 17th Annual National Senior Poets Laureate Competition in 2009. And she was poet laureate of Wyoming from November 7, 2011, to June 9, 2013.
