Patti Marxsen began her writing career over 20 years ago as an art critic and culture journalist for The Lexington Herald Leader (Kentucky) and The Camden Herald (Maine). Since then, she has been a consultant, The Write Woman, and managed communications and publications for several educational and cultural organizations in New England. Most recently, during her nearly seven years at the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century [now the Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue], she directed the development of multi-author books on global ethics and education, including "Educating Citizens for Global Awareness," edited by Nel Noddings (2005), and "Ethical Visions of Education: Philosophies in Practice" edited by David T. Hansen (2007), both published by Teachers College Press.

Patti Marxsen’s articles, essays, and reviews (art and books) have appeared in over 40 publications including the Clarion (Journal of the American Museum of Folk Art), the Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, Fourth Genre, The French Review, Women’s Review of Books, Absinthe, the Maine Antique Digest, the New England Antique Journal, the International Herald Tribune, and the Journal of Haitian Studies. As a former French teacher with a master’s degree in art history, she has a long-standing interest in the art and literature of the Francophone world. In recent years, her contributions to the study of Haitian literature have been noteworthy. In addition to thoughtful reviews on the writings of Madison Smartt Bell, Susan Buck-Morss, Laurent Dubois, and Paul Farmer, she has written substantive articles on the work of Edwidge Danticat (“The Map Within: Place, Displacement, and the Long Shadow of History in the Work of Edwidge Danticat,” Journal of Haitian Studies, Fall 2005) and Marie Vieux-Chauvet (“In Perpetual Revolt,” Women’s Review of Books, March/April 2010). In 2009, she presented a provocative paper at the annual Haitian Studies Association conference—“Public Spaces/Silent Voices? Access to Modern Haitian Literature in American Public Libraries”— in which she analyzed the “ecology” of motives, filters, and issues influencing the availability of major Haitian voices in three large public library systems.

Marxsen is also one of the few Americans currently “at home” with the work of Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz (1878-1944). In 2008, she published “The Quest and the Question in C.F. Ramuz’s Si le soleil ne revenait pas…” in The French Review, the journal of the American Association of Teachers of French, and has since written an in-depth review of the first of Ramuz’s novels to be translated into English in over 50 years, The Young Man from Savoy. (“Ramuz’s World,” Absinthe, 2009). Among her works-in-progress is a translation of Ramuz’s 70-page prose poem, Song of Our Rhône, undertaken with the authorization of the Ramuz-Olivieri family.

Her own books include a collection of travel essays, Island Journeys: Exploring the Legacy of France (Alondra Press, 2008); a collection of short fiction, Tales from the Heart of Haiti (Educa Vision, 2010); and her first published book-length translation, Albert Schweitzer’s Lambarene: A Legacy of Humanity for Our World Today by Jo and Walter Munz (Penobscot Press, 2010). Beyond the Village: Essays Out of Switzerland won first prize in the 2009 All Nations Press non-fiction chapbook competition and will be published in 2010.

Marxsen has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and lives in Switzerland where she is currently at work on a historical novel set in twentieth-century Haiti.