Born in Salem, Missouri in 1943, Paulette Jiles has lived in the Canary Islands, North Africa, the Arctic and Nelson. She received her B.A. in Spanish literature at the University of Missourri. In 1974 she was sent by CBC to work in a remote north Ontario community called Big Trout Lake, knowing precious little about the north. After seven years among the northern Cree and Ojibway peoples who call themselves Anishinabe, she wrote a reflective memoir North Spirit: Travels Among the Cree and Ojibway Nations and Their Star Maps (Doubleday 1995).

After her first poetry collection, Waterloo Express (1973), Jiles' second poetry collection, Celestial Navigation (1983), won all three major Canadian poetry prizes in 1984, including the Governor-General's award. Her Sitting in the Club Car Drinking Rum and Karma Kola: A Manual of Etiquette for Ladies Crossing Canada by Train (Polestar, 1986) is about a woman on the lam, crossing Canada by train. It was reprinted in 2003. Her futuristic novel is The Late Great Human Road Show (Talonbooks, 1986) set in post-nuclear Toronto where there isn't any fresh food, running water, gasoline or television--but resourceful characters endure in comic ways. Other titles are The Jesse James Poems, Cousins and a 1988 U.S. collection, Blackwater, which appeared on the New York Times Recommended List. Her prose collection, Song to the Rising Sun, includes her Actra Award-winning play Money and Blankets.

[BCBW 2003] "Fiction" "Poetry" "First Nations"