Pat McCaw 

Pat McCaw traveled a winding path to the writing world. Her childhood love of storytelling was overruled by science, and she earned her MD at the University of Iowa. After practicing family medicine for fifteen years, she picked up a pen and wrote a middle-grade fantasy novel in two weeks. Her passion for writing resurfaced, and it changed her life.

With two kids and a busy medical practice, she went back to school and earned her MFA in Creative Writing for Children from Hamline University. She journeyed into fantastic worlds with her characters and didn’t want to leave. In a massive life change, she left her family practice after 20 years to focus on writing.

 Through Mighty Media Press, she published children’s books for Mayo Clinic Press. She combined her medical and writing worlds to create a six-book series Helping Paws Academy. In each book, therapy dogs teach hospitalized children about diabetes, seizures, broken bones, stitches, leukemia, and appendicitis. A second four-book series, Edge of Medicine, is expected in Spring 2025 and explores medical breakthroughs in surgery, neuroscience, cancer treatment, and nanomedicine.

Pat writes middle grade and young adult fiction, non-fiction and fiction picture books, as well as adult fiction. She lives in rural Iowa with her husband and two daughters. She’s faculty at a medical residency program teaching doctors-in-training and works urgent care part-time. Her family is working their way through the National Parks and enjoying each hike along the way. She loves to fish, camp, hunt mushrooms, and explore hidden trails in the trees.