Paula Friedman

Paula Friedman's honors include Pushcart Prize nominations and New Millenium Writings, OSPA, and other awards and honors, as well as Centrum and Soapstone residencies and fellowships. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous print and online literary magazines and anthologies. Ursula K. Le Guin called Friedman's debut novel, The Rescuer’s Path (2012, 2018) "exciting, physically vivid, and romantic," Cheryl Strayed termed it "humane and wise," and Carole L. Glickfeld said "I could not stop reading this novel. I loved it." Of Friedman's second book, The Change Chronicles: A novel of the Sixties antiwar movement (2018, 2020), Wesley Hogan, Director, Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, says "This is a book to share and discuss--a triumph." Friedman's newest volume is Of Elegant Time: 22 Stories (2022), called "Damn well written . . . sharp stories--they pierce one's heart" by Helen Chuckrow, author of Interpreting the Bible with Chutzpah, and "Deeply personal tales, exquisite tales, moments of both sublime beauty and grave peril in the lives of Friedman's protagonists" (Jeremy Lichtman, author of Alien Puzzle Boxes: 20 Stories). Earlier, Friedman's poetry chapbook, Time and Other Details, appeared in 2006.

Friedman teaches fiction and memoir writing in Oregon, and edits books for university and trade presses. Previously, she directed public relations for the Judah Magnes Jewish Museum, directed the international Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience, and founded and led the collective literary magazine The Open Cell. She has run author readings and workshops in Berkeley and Paris, edited the 2014 science fiction anthology The Future Is Short, and has compiled an anthology of West Coast Jewish women’s poetry. She holds an MA from San Francisco State University and a BA from Cornell University. Active in peace and justice issues, she received the 2006 award of the Columbia River Fellowship for Peace.