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Paula Huston (born April 25, 1952) is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and creative nonfiction writer.

Life

Paula Huston was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the eldest of five children of Lyle and Solveig Dahl, and grew up in Long Beach, California, where she attended Millikan High School. She married her first husband a year after graduation, and in 1973, they moved to the San Luis Obispo area, where she began writing and publishing short stories. Her daughter, Andrea, was born in 1977, and her son, John, arrived in 1978. Divorced in the early 1980‘s, she married Michael Huston in 1985. With his encouragement, she enrolled in her mid-thirties at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where she earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English and a Master’s Degree in British and American Literature, going on to teach in the Cal Poly English Department for the next twelve years. In 1994 she became a Catholic, and in 1999, a Camaldolese Benedictine oblate (a vowed lay member of the contemplative monastic community of New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur).

Her first novel, Daughters of Song, was published in 1995. In 1999 she helped design and implement the California State University Consortium Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, in which she taught for the next three years. When the program ended in 2002, she took an early retirement from the Cal Poly to become a full-time writer, speaker and retreat leader. She currently serves as a creative nonfiction mentor for the Seattle Pacific University MFA program. She and her husband live on four acres on the Central Coast of California, where they keep chickens and bees; maintain fruit trees, a raised bed vegetable garden, and an olive orchard; and spend a lot of time with their four young grandchildren.

Work

Before her conversion to Catholicism and subsequent vows as a contemplative oblate, Huston wrote literary fiction for fifteen years, often with artist protagonists or themes involving art. Her first novel, Daughters of Song, is a coming-of-age story about a young piano prodigy at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore; her short story “Pilgrimage” involves a lonely woman coming to terms with the memory of her famous pianist father; her short story “The Cattle Raid of Cooley” features a literature professor who struggles with sexual fantasies about his students.

Post-conversion, she began using the techniques of literary fiction to write about religious faith. In her first project, Signatures of Grace: Catholic Writers on the Sacraments, she and co-editor Tom Grady asked eight prominent literary writers, including novelist Ron Hansen, poet Paul Mariani, novelist Mary Gordon, and essayist Patricia Hampl, to each contribute a long personal essay about one of the seven Catholic sacraments. Convinced there was an audience for literary writers of faith, Huston went on to write six books of spiritual creative nonfiction, including The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life, a narrative account of the spiritual practices she learned from her association with the monks of New Camaldoli. In 2013, she published her second novel, A Land Without Sin, about a hardened young battlefield photojournalist seeking her missing priest brother in the jungles of Central America. Huston’s protagonist, Eva, is an atheist; the novel asks how it is we can deeply love people we neither agree with nor understand. In Huston’s One Ordinary Sunday: A Meditation on the Mystery of the Mass, she returns to narrative spiritual nonfiction to explain the historical roots and theological meaning of each element of the Catholic Mass.

Awards and Honors

Chrysostom Society Member, 2013-present.

A Season of Mystery, Top Fifty Books of 2012, Spirituality and Practice.

Simplifying the Soul, #1 Amazon Easter and Lenten Book Lists, 2012.

“The Kingdom of the Eternal Heaven,” Best Spiritual Writing, 2010.

Forgiveness, Library Journal starred review, 2009.

The Holy Way, Catholic Press Association Award, 2004.

The Holy Way, Bronze Medal for Religious Book of the Year, ForeWord Magazine, 2003.

The Holy Way, Catholic Book Club Main selection, America, 2004.

Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly for The Holy Way, Signatures of Grace, Daughters of Song.

Signatures of Grace, Boston Globe’s “Dean’s List,” 2000.

National Screening Committee, Fulbright Awards in Creative Writing, 2000.

Walter Dakin Fellowship, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, 1997.

Daughters of Song, Christian Science Monitor’s Novelist Debut review, 1995.

National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Creative Writing, 1994.

“A Misery of Love,” Best American Short Stories 100 Distinguished Stories of 1994.

“Mercy,” Best American Short Stories 100 Distinguished Stories of 1993.

Novels

A Land Without Sin (Slant, 2013).

Daughters of Song (Random House, 1995).

Selected Short Stories:

“Pilgrimage,” Image, Spring 2010.

“The Cattle Raid of Cooley,” Image, Spring 2003.

“Serenissma,” Missouri Review, Winter 1996.

“A Misery of Love,” Story, Autumn, 1993.

“Mercy,” American Short Fiction,” Autumn, 1992.

“War Story,” North American Review,” June, 1989.

“Swimmer,” Massachusetts Review, Summer 1984.

“The Bouzouki,” Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1983.

“The Singing of Angels,” MSS, Fall 1983.

Nonfiction

One Ordinary Sunday: A Meditation on the Mystery of the Mass (Ave Maria Press, forthcoming,    March 2016)

A Season of Mystery: 10 Spiritual Practices for Embracing a Happier Second Half of Life

(Loyola Press, 2012).

Simplifying the Soul: Lenten Practices to Renew Your Spirit (Ave Maria Press, 2011).

Forgiveness: Following Jesus Into Radical Loving (Paraclete Press, 2009).

By Way of Grace: Moving from Faithfulness to Holiness (Loyola Press, 2007).

The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life (Loyola Press, 2003).

Nonfiction, Co-Editor and Contributor

Signatures of Grace: Catholic Writers on the Sacraments, contributed the essay    “Matrimony” (Dutton, 2000)

Selected Essays

“God Amid the Materialism,” The Christian Century, March 2015.

“Of Monks and Men,” The Christian Century, March 2014.

“Attending to the Light,” Image, June 2013.

“Falling Into Prayer,” The Christian Century, December 2012.

“Wake-Up Call,” Christian Century, January 2010.

“Grounded in God-Words,” Geez, Fall 2009.

“Bearing Light,” Image, Fall 2008.

“The Kingdom of the Eternal Heaven,” Image, Spring 2008.

“Salvation Work-Out,” The Christian Century, April 2008.

“Grace,” Geez, Spring 2007.

“The Art of Believing in Things Unseen,” America, March 2007.

“Confession,” Geez, Winter 2007.

Anthologized Work

“The Buried Life: Bede Griffiths,” Not Less than Everything: Catholic Writers

on Heroes of Conscience from Joan of Arc to Oscar Romero (HarperOne, 2013).

“The Kingdom of the Eternal Heaven,” Best Spiritual Essays, (Viking, 2010).

“The Sacrament of Matrimony,” Faith at the Edge: A New Generation of Catholic Writers

Reflects on Life, Love, Sex, and Other Mysteries (Ave Maria Press, 2008).

“In Glad Expectancy,” Take Heart: Catholic Writers on Hope in Our Time (Crossroads

Press, 2007).

Selected Lectures and Retreats

“Writing as Spiritual Formation,” Festival of Faith and Writing, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, April 19, 2010.

“Preparing Ourselves for Lent,” Ignatian Center, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, January 25, 2012.

“Focusing On Forgiveness,” Renovare Leadership Conference, St. Francis in the Fields Episcopalian Church, Louisville, Kentucky, February 18-20, 2011.

“Salvation Work-Out,” Valle Crucis Conference Center, bishop and clergy of the Episcopalian Diocese of Western South Carolina, March 14-16, 2011.

“To Pray Without Ceasing: A Contemplative Path for Post-Modern Pilgrims,” World Community for Christian Meditation Center, Westchester, California, January 16, 2011.

“Can Christian Forgiveness Be Reconciled with the Death Penalty?” Newman University, Wichita, Kansas, April 2010.

“The Impossible Art of Forgiving” and “Praying Like a Monk,” Los Angeles Catholic Religious Education Congress, March 2010.

“The Death of Reason” (Newman Lecture) Oregon State University, Corvalis, Oregon,Fall 2006.

“Simplifying Life,” (Newman Lecture), Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, California, Spring 2001.

(1) http://paulahuston.com/ (2) http://www.amazon.com/Daughters-Song-Paula-Huston/dp/0679419691