Paulette Jiles

Paulette Kay Jiles (also known as Paulette K. Jiles, Paulette Jiles-Johnson; April 4, 1943 – July 8, 2025) was an American poet, memoirist and novelist.

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 lived on a 36-acre (14.6 ha) ranch near Utopia, Texas, about 80 miles (128 km) west of San Antonio.

In June 2025, Jiles announced that she had been diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. She died at a San Antonio hospital on July 8, 2025, at the age of 82.

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