Patrick Doud was born in 1968 in Syracuse, New York. He grew up in Bernhards Bay, a hamlet on the northern shore of Oneida Lake, and in East Amherst, a suburb of Buffalo. After several years of academic wandering he ended up at Bard College in the Hudson Valley, where he studied literature. Three books of his poetry were published in the nineties: Girding the Ghost, The Man in Green, and Hickory Bardolino Poems. Although he continues to be involved with poetry, these days most of his attention is devoted to fantasy. He is quick to explain that there is much traffic between the two. He and his family live in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in a house near the woods, the city, and the sea.