Paulette Jiles

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 peoples in Ontario and elsewhere.
After marrying Jim Johnson, she moved with him 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.
Paulette Jiles is a novelist and poet. Her best-selling novels include Enemy Women, Stormy Weather, and The Color Of Lightning. She won Canada’s highest award for poetry, The Governor General’s Award. She graduated from the University of Missouri in Romance Languages. She lives near San Antonio, Texas. The agent is the superlative Liz Darhansoff; editor, the incomparable Jennifer Brehl. Paulette’s publisher for News of the World, Lighthouse Island, Stormy Weather, Enemy Women, and Color of Lightning is Harper Collins.
Her 2016 novel News of the World was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.