|
Author's Biography
Paula Huston wrote literary
fiction for more than twenty years before
shifting her focus to spirituality. She is the
author of the critically acclaimed novel
Daughters of Song (Random House 1995), which
the Baltimore Sun called "far and away
the best book yet" about life in the classical
piano world at Peabody Conservatory. Nominated
for the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco's
Gold Medal for Best First Novel, it was also
chosen by the Christian Science Monitor
for its first "Novelist's Debut" review and
selected by the Music Book Society and
Performing Arts Book Club. Her short stories
have appeared in numerous literary quarterlies,
including American Short Fiction, North
American Review, Missouri Review, Massachusetts
Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Story, MSS,
and Image, and were twice selected
for the Best American Short Stories list.
Her first nonfiction project,
Signatures of Grace: Catholic Writers on the
Sacraments (Dutton 2000), was an attempt to
bring literary artists together around a
spiritual theme. She and co-editor Thomas Grady
invited well-known fiction writers and poets to
write a personal essay focused on a particular
sacrament. This Catholic Book Club selection
included original work by Ron Hansen, Patricia
Hampl, Paul Mariani, Murray Bodo, Katherine Vaz,
Mary Gordon, and Andre Dubus, in addition to
Huston’s own contribution entitled "Matrimony."
Signatures of Grace appeared on the
Boston Globe's annual "Dean's List,"
earned a starred review from Publishers
Weekly and spent weeks near the top of
Amazon.com's New and Notable Christian Book
List.
Her book The Holy Way:
Practices for a Simple Life (Loyola Press
2003) grew out of her longtime association with
a contemplative monastic community in Big Sur
and her struggles to incorporate some of their
practices into her own busy routine. In this
highly personal narrative, which Merton scholar
Robert Inchausti has called "one of the best
applications of the lives of the saints to
contemporary experience" that he has ever read,
she returns to the ancient Christian disciplines
of solitude, silence, fasting, chastity,
frugality, manual labor, and hospitality in
search of a way to free her life of unnecessary
distractions. The Holy Way, a Catholic
Press Association award-winner and Catholic Book
Club major selection, earned a starred review
from Publishers Weekly and a bronze medal
from Foreword Magazine for Book of the
Year in Religion.
Her most recent book, By Way
of Grace: Moving From Faithfulness to Holiness
(Loyola Press 2007) offers a contemporary
revisiting of the great Christian virtues of
prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude,
humility, faith, hope, and love, Since a healthy
practice of the virtues depends so heavily on
clear spiritual vision, Huston draws upon the
lives and work of the doctors of the church
particularly known for their writings on
contemplation. Novelist Ron Hansen describes
By Way of Grace as “an amazing, lovely,
important book . . . . that may become a
classic.” Poet and essayist Paul Mariani adds,
“Paula is surely on her way to becoming an
indispensable guide and vade mecum for
the complex, wondrous, and marvelous journey” of
the Christian spiritual life.
Huston’s Love Is the Eye: A
Pilgrim On the Ancient Christian Way is the
story of her solo pilgrimage to major spiritual
centers in Greece, Israel, Ukraine, Russia,
Kazakhstan, India, and Nepal; it is currently
being read by publishers. She is also at work
on a new book for Paraclete Press, Forgiving
Evil for the Sake of the Good.
Huston is a National Endowment
for the Arts Fellow, and has served on the
National Screening Committee for Fulbright
Awards in Creative Writing. She taught writing
and literature at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and
served as a core faculty member of the
California State University Consortium Master of
Fine Arts in Creative Writing program for many
years before leaving academia to write fulltime.
A Camaldolese Benedictine oblate,
Huston is married, has four grown children, and
lives in rural Arroyo Grande, California.
|
|
Public Appearances
A popular speaker and retreat leader,
Paula Huston, who is listed with the Catholic Exchange
Speakers’ Bureau, offers parish talks and full-length
conferences on simplicity and prayer to churches of all
denominations. She also leads retreats for contemplative
centers and Christian meditation groups throughout the
U.S.
She is a faculty member for the Glen Workshop at St.
Johns College in Santa Fe, a week-long arts and religion
conference sponsored by Image Magazine, and regularly
teaches spiritual writing and creative nonfiction at the
Cuesta Writers’ Conference in San Luis Obispo,
California. She has been a Newman Lecturer for several
universities and has done readings and interviews in
numerous venues, including writers’ conferences,
bookstores, prisons, public radio stations, and cable
TV.
|
