Paulette Jiles


Paulette Jiles is an American poet, memoirist, and novelist.

Personal life

Paulette Kay Jiles was born in 1943 in Salem, Missouri. She attended college at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, graduating in 1968 with a major in Romance Languages. Jiles moved to Toronto, Canada in 1969, where she worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and, subsequently, helped set up native language, FM radio stations with indigenous peoples in the far north of Ontario and Quebec for the next 10 years. In the process, she learned the Ojibwe language
spoken by the Anishinaabeg tribes in Ontario and elsewhere.
After marrying Texan Jim Johnson, she moved with him temporarily to San Antonio in 1991. After several years of travel, including living in Mexico, the couple resettled in San Antonio in 1995, buying a house in the historical district. After her divorce in 2003, Jiles has lived on a 36-acre ranch near Utopia, Texas, about 80 miles west of San Antonio.

Writing career

Her 2016 novel News of the World was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.

Selected bibliography