PAM HOUSTON
PAM HOUSTON is the award-winning author of two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound; two short story collections, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat; and nonfiction works including Without Exception, Deep Creek, and Air Mail. Houston teaches at UC Davis and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and she co-founded Writing By Writers. She lives on a homestead in Colorado with her husband.
BEHIND THE BOOK
An Interview with Pam Houston about the making of Without Exception (COMING SOON!).
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
ANIMALS TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING
What can animals teach us about how to be human?
From Icelandic mares and Irish wolfhounds to elephants, leopards, hyena bitches, and a desert-adapted lioness named Charlie, Pam Houston has learned life’s most important lessons from animals. How to play. How to rest. How to love. How to die. How to be present with the dying. How to be present with the living and with the Earth. How to find joy in the least likely places. How to find joy, literally, everywhere. With playful sincerity, Houston finds power and promise in the teachings of our fellow creatures and reminds us that the animals are here for us, every day and everywhere.
“Animals Taught Me Everything is a gift to readers. Especially those scalded by world events. The radical generosity of Houston’s heart and spirit worked on me like the strongest medicine. In essays written with graceful vulnerability and hard-won wisdom, we learn from her brilliant relatives: Icelandic horses, elder wolfhounds, the white spiders of Namibia. This is a book I desperately needed—grateful it fell into my hands!”
—MONA SUSAN POWER, A Council of Dolls
WITHOUT EXCEPTION
Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood, and Freedom
Without Exception is a call for freedom by way of abortion rights.
Written with equal parts candor and lyricism, Pam Houston illuminates the interconnected histories of abortion in the United States and in her own life during the decades when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. Houston guides us through the shifting landscapes of politics, the law, and self-determination in a country where access to medical care and the power to determine your own destiny are increasingly—and once again—dependent on geography and circumstance.
“The mix of the personal and the political is where Without Exception truly shines, as Houston writes with candor and urgency about her experience of abuse, abortion, and the freedom to choose her own path in life. A personal reckoning that lays bare the heart of the fight for reproductive justice, and an urgent and heartfelt reminder to give and receive love and mercy to each other—and to ourselves.”
—SHELF AWARENESS
AIR MAIL
Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place
When the state of Colorado ordered its residents to shelter in place in response to the spread of coronavirus, writers Pam Houston and Amy Irvine—who had never met—began a correspondence based on their shared devotion to the rugged, windswept mountains that surround their homes, one on either side of the Continental Divide. As the numbers of infected and dead rose and the nation split dangerously over the crisis, Houston and Irvine found their letters to one another as necessary as breath. Part tribute to wilderness, part indictment against tyranny and greed, Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place reveals the evolution of a friendship that galvanizes as it chronicles a strange new world.
“An affecting collection of candid, heartfelt letters that stands as a testimony to the sustenance of friendship in frightening times.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS