Patricia R. Corbett

Interviewed by Rose Norman on December 2, 2015.
Edited and updated by Merril Mushroom and Patricia Corbett on April 15, 2023

Patricia R. Corbett, born in 1966, was raised in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Reverend Linwood Corbett, Senior, a Southern Baptist minister and a baggage foreman, was her greatest influence. He worked as a custodian to put himself through school at Virginia Union University, a Black Baptist university in Virginia.

Patricia Corbett is an artist, storyteller, award-winning playwright, educator, writer/editor, and entrepreneur. Her passions include community service, social justice, and education. Patricia earned a bachelor of arts degree in English from Virginia Union University, in Richmond, Virginia, and master of fine arts degree in interdisciplinary arts from Goddard College, in Plainfield, Vermont.

Among her many accomplishments, Patricia Corbett is the recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council for her play, Fall of the House of Snow. She served on the Washington, D. C., Black Pride, board of directors; and she serves on the D.C. Capital Pride Community planning committee. She earned the D.C. Black Pride Welmore Cook Award for outstanding community service. She won the Banks-Koegel Commitment Award from Youth Pride Alliance for her commitment to LGBTQ youth in Washington, D.C.

Patricia Corbett was given the RVA [Richmond, Virginia] Unsung Black LGBTQ Community award by Diversity Richmond, a nonprofit resource for Richmond’s LGBTQ+ community. While in graduate school in 1998, Patricia founded JUSTaSISTA Productions, a company that has grown with her development as a writer and artist. She has worked in Virginia, Vermont, the District of Columbia, Maryland, and, since July 2022, in North Carolina, where she is the first, African American executive director of the LGBT Center of Raleigh.

Patricia Corbett has several works in progress, including Rise of the House of Snow, Perils of a Southern Black Woman, and Aunt Maggie’s Mojo OR The Devil in Angel Brown. Her work weaves themes of gender identity, feminism, death, secrets and family into taut complex stories.

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