Jude Morton was born on the Canadian prairies, of Ukrainian and Irish ancestry. As a child she hungered for books before she could read, and coveted pencils before she could write. She has spent most of her life reading voraciously: literature, spiritual classics, semiotics, philosophy, and writing poetry, fiction, and essays. She has been an Oblate of the Camaldolese Benedictine monks (New Camaldoli Hermitage, Big Sur, CA) for more than ten years, and lives an eccentric and solitary life with a feline companion. A self-taught scholar with a particular interest in Black Madonnas, she spoke at the 46th International Conference on Medieval Studies (Western Michigan University, 2011), and the 2nd International Conference on Religion and Spirituality in Society (Vancouver, BC, 2012).