Judith Valente
Author, poet and journalist
Judith Valente is an author, poet and journalist who leads retreats on contemplative living. She wrote How to Live, a 2018 book on the Rule of St. Benedict.
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Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, United States
About Judith Valente
Judith Valente is a poet, author and journalist. Her newspaper career includes staff writing roles at The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and she was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She also covered faith and values for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on PBS and won two Edward R. Murrow Awards for her radio reporting. How to Live, from 2018, explores what the Rule of St. Benedict can teach about happiness, meaning and community. Book groups around the world have read it as they try to live more contemplatively in everyday life. Valente has a lay association with Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine monastery in Atchison, Kansas, and she wrote about it in her 2013 memoir Atchison Blue. She also speaks and leads retreats on inner wisdom, poetry and finding meaning in work. Mary Oliver selected her chapbook Inventing An Alphabet for the 2005 Aldrich Poetry Prize. Valente lives in central Illinois, where she and her husband, Charles Reynard, run an alfalfa farm.