Meet Trish

Trish Heald is a chameleon who grew up base-to-base in the US Navy. She wore the dry colors of the Mojave Desert, the oceanic colors of San Diego beaches, the evergreen colors of the Pacific Northwest, and the red, white, and blue of the nation’s capital. She needed a lot of therapy and many imaginary friends to find her true colors. Then she got older and couldn’t remember them.

Along the way, she acquired a BA in Communication at Rutgers University and an MBA at Cranfield University in England. She built a professional career as a strategic business advisor, writer, and editor. She raised three delightful infants into three (not so delightful) teenagers. After a personal crisis led to an MA in Transpersonal Psychology, Trish turned her hand to fiction. She is passionate about helping colorful characters through catastrophe and catharsis (her professors advised against working with real people). Humor is her superpower.

Today, Trish wears the multiple colors of the San Francisco Bay Area and shares a house with her English husband, three itinerant kids, and a narcoleptic beagle. When she isn’t writing or reading, she’s probably binge-watching Harlan Coben movies with a glass of bourbon on the rocks.

Sassafras is her debut novel.

5 Fun Facts About Trish

1. Trish’s book love began when her grandmother, Meme, read The Secret Garden to her (she’s been looking for her own secret garden ever since).

2. She lived in England for 12 years (and after 13 years of living in California, she still has a chill in her bones).

3. Trish has her tonsils, kidneys, adenoids, wisdom teeth, and appendix (but had surgery to remove one ovary—that’s called an oophorectomy—go figure).

4. Every month, she makes a secret (not anymore) trip to Popeyes fried chicken and eats it in her car listening to Terry Gross on NPR.

5. Trish’s first memory is when she swallowed a dime at the Spokane World’s Fair in 1974 (and her mother pointing it out in her poop later that day). She was five.

Interests

Reading, writing, family, friends, hiking, beachcombing, travel, road trips, psychology, good food (eating it, not cooking it), and good wine (drinking it, not collecting it).

Keep Up With Trish On Instagram!