Patricia Nell Warren was born in Helena, Montana on June 15, 1936 and grew up in southwest Montana on the Grant-Kohrs Ranch near Deer Lodge. Her parents, Con and Nell Warren, were cattle ranchers; Warren had one brother, Conrad. She began writing at age 10 and got her first literary recognition at age 18, winning the Atlantic Monthly College Fiction Contest with a short story.
Warren earned an associate of arts degree from Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri in 1955, then a bachelor of arts in English in 1957 from Manhattanville College in Purchase, New York.
In 1957, she married Ukrainian emigre poet Yuriy Tarnawsky. Through her marriage, she learned the Ukrainian language and became associated with a group of other young Ukrainian emigre poets who became internationally known as the New York Group. As a part of their publishing collective, she began writing and publishing poetry in Ukrainian.
In 1974 Warren published her second novel, The Front Runner. Told from the point of view of a gay track coach, the story chronicled his struggle to get a talented openly gay runner on the U.S. Olympic team, and to quash his own growing love for his protegé. The controversial book was the first contemporary gay fiction to make The New York Times Best Seller list. The book sold 10 million copies and was translated in to 10 different languages. Two decades later, Warren added two sequels, Harlan's Race (1994) and Billy's Boy (1996). Warren also came out as a lesbian in 1974.
As a runner herself, Warren was one of the first women to run in the Boston Marathon, in 1968. She participated in a group of female runners who got women's marathoning recognized in the U.S.
In 1976, Warren published her third novel, The Fancy Dancer. The story was set in her native Montana, tracking the struggle with sexual orientation issues of a young Catholic parish priest in a small cow-country town.
In 1978, came Warren's fourth novel, The Beauty Queen. Also published by Morrow, this book was set in the New York City world where she'd spent many years. The story focused on a socially prominent Manhattan businessman, a closeted gay father trying to get up the courage to come out to his daughter, who had become a fiercely anti-gay born-again Christian politician.
