Pat Torres belongs to three Indigenous groups - the Jabirr Jabirr from the north of Broome, the Nyul Nyul from the Beagle Bay area and the Yawuru people from south of Broome. She is a writer, artist, illustrator, community worker, health worker, educator and Aboriginal administrator and has a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education. She became a health worker with the national Aboriginal trachoma program in Western Australia and in 1978 was employed as a Legal Aid Field Officer with the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. Following this Torres took up the position as Curriculum Development Officer for the State Education Department in Hobart in 1981. On returning to Western Australia she was appointed Secretary to the Kimberley Land Council at Derby and worked for the Federal Deparment of Education and Youth Affairs from 1982 to 1989 in Broome, Darwin and Canberra..
In the following years, Torres was appointed as a Lecturer in the Centre for Aborigianl Studies at Curtin University of Technology teaching Aboriginal Studies to non-Indigenous students. She trained in Linguistics at Curtin University and the University of Western Australia, graduating with a Masters Degree in Education and spent several years retrieving the languages of her grandparents and collecting oral histories from the Yawuru and Nyul Nyul traditional elders. Torres is an active Aboriginal community member and apart from writing her own stories, she is recording the Kimberley oral history. Torres has worked with many Kimberley community organisations including the Yawuru Aboriginal Corporation, Winarn Aboriginal Arts and Crafts, Magabala Books and the Broome Aboriginal Media Association.
