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 In the process, she learned the
Ojibwe language spoken by the
Anishinaabeg peoples in Ontario and elsewhere. After several years of travel, including living in Mexico, the couple resettled in San Antonio in 1995, buying a house in the historical district. She died at a San Antonio hospital on July 8, 2025, at the age of 82. == Writing career ==