Meeting Faith, Black Buddhist nun

Dhr. Seven, Crystal Quintero (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; Faith Adiele (adiele.com), insightla.org

Having been a Buddhist nun, one knows beyond intellect. Faith Adiele (Civitella Ranieri)

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Visiting teacher Faith Adiele (insightla.org)

Faith Adiele’s memoir about leaving Harvard to become Thailand’s first Black Theravada Buddhist nun, won a PEN Award and routinely makes "best travel writing" lists.

She also writes for the meditation app Calm, as well as for A World of Calm, a series co-produced by Calm and HBO, with narration from Idris Elba, Kate Winslet, Mahershala Ali, Lucy Liu, and others. 

She has lived in West Africa and Southeast Asia, worked as a diversity trainer and community activist, and taught travel writing and memoir from Bali to Ghana to Switzerland, including at Esalen with Cheryl Strayed and The Open Center NYC, where she was recently in conversation with Julia Cameron of The Artists’ Way about mindful listening and creativity.

She is now associate professor of creative nonfiction at California College of the Arts and the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program. More

• Website: adiele.com
• Twitter: @meetingfaith
• Instagram: @meetingfaith
• Change Your Life, Change the World: Writing

Professor of writing

Why We Travel: A Conversation with Faith Adiele (undomesticatedmag.com)

Faithness! | fabfaith (adiele.com)

(2020) Faith Adiele is currently Distinguished Lurie Professor at San Jose State University.

She began the semester in a classroom teaching creative writing MFAs nonfiction, specifically memoir.... She is a self-described “typical Nigerian • Nordic • American girl.”

She is “Thailand’s first Black Buddhist nun” and has written several books about embodying the intersections of these identities.

She is cosmopolitan, and yet true to Buddhist teaching, deeply aware of her greater responsibility to humanity becoming self-actualized. Her writing reflects this.

“There’s gotta be a social justice mission to [writing across the genres] routing out the institutional racism, homophobia, and sexism that stops our voices from coming out.”

Her teaching philosophy marries these to craft and literary criticism. “Is your teaching about activism, is it about social justice, is it about creating a space and challenging things?” Interview with Faith Adiele (dpwc2020.com)