Paulette Jiles, the acclaimed and best-selling novelist, has passed away.
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The News of the World author, whose work was later adapted into a film of the same name starring Tom Hanks, died on July 8, according to the Houston Chronicle.
In a recent blog post, Jiles revealed that she had been diagnosed with a type of non-alcoholic cirrhosis. She was 82.
We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of author Paulette Jiles. She was an award-winning novelist, poet, and memoirist of eighteen books. Our hearts go out to her family, friends, and literary colleagues during this time. #sabf pic.twitter.com/4YMPT6DPs3
— San Antonio Book Festival (@SABookFestival) July 9, 2025
Jiles, originally from Missouri, lived in Canada for several years as a poet and reporter before returning to the U.S. She later married and moved to San Antonio, then the Hill Country, where she became a novelist, selling over 800,000 books in North America, per the San Antonio Report.
Jiles said her rural Texas life and Civil War research influenced her work. Critics regard her as a leading writer of Western novels, alongside Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy.
“Some people are just born with a love of landscape or the outdoors, or gardening, or raising large animals, or searching through the non-urban world for treasure,” Jiles explained in a 2017 interview with Read Her Like an Open Book. “It’s in your DNA or something. I am one of those people.”
While in Canada, Jiles showcased her creative writing talents by publishing two poetry collections: Waterloo Express (1973) and Celestial Navigation (1984), the latter earning her the prestigious 1984 Governor General’s Award for English Poetry.
In the mid-1980s, Jiles focused on writing long-form fiction, including Sitting in the Club Car Drinking Rum and Karma-Kola: A Manual of Etiquette for Ladies Crossing Canada by Train. The illustrated period piece, combining noir, humor, and romance, earned Jiles critical acclaim and an Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize nomination.
Paulette Jiles Wrote a Memoir Detailing Meeting 24 Estranged Cousins
Jiles’ late 1980s novel, The Late Great Human Show, a post-apocalyptic drama, was nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award. She released three more poetry and prose collections in the late ’80s. A trip to the Missouri Ozarks in 1989 led to her only marriage and inspired her next book, Cousins.
The memoir recounts Paulette Jiles’ meeting Jim Johnson, a retired Army officer and Vietnam veteran, during a transformative period in her life. After leaving an unhappy marriage, Johnson joined Jiles on a journey across the Midwest and South as she interviewed her 24 estranged first cousins to better understand her past. By the time her memoir Cousins was published in 1992, the two were married and living in San Antonio.
The success of Enemy Women boosted Jiles’ writing career, but her marriage to Johnson ended, and they divorced amicably in 2003. Jiles then purchased over 30 acres of ranchland near Utopia, Texas, 80 miles west of San Antonio.
At her ranch, Jiles wrote six more novels, including News of the World (2016), which was adapted into a 2020 film starring Tom Hanks. The story follows war veteran Jefferson Kidd, who travels to small Texas towns reading news to locals. News of the World received widespread critical acclaim and was honored as a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.
“There has been nobody to talk books with, I’ve of course been outside the Texas literary establishment, which is urban, so very urban,” Jiles wrote at the end of May. “But I wouldn’t trade all this for the awards and cocktail parties and the seminars and the other various gatherings.”
A celebration of Jiles’ life is scheduled for Sunday at Utopia Methodist Church.