From Alaska to Louisiana, Virginia to Kansas, Judith Hougen’s backyard while growing up was an eclectic sampling of states and cultures. After finishing high school in Wisconsin, she attended Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she graduated with a B.A. in English literature and in psychology. 

Two years later, she packed up a U-Haul and headed off to Missoula, Montana, for graduate studies.  Living in the Rocky Mountains, she wrote poems, hung out with hippies, and camped in coffee shops until the University of Montana saw fit to award her a Master’s of Fine Arts in creative writing.  She spent the next two years as a cashier and oat-bin-filler at a natural food store owned by her church.  She swam in the Bigfoot River, wrote more poems, and was happy. 

Eventually, she returned to the Minneapolis area and worked for several years in development and public relations for an urban youth ministry.  She kept writing, winning the Loft-McKnight Award in 1990, which gave her the money to buy her first computer—a Mac Classic.  Not long after that, she submitted a manuscript to the Minnesota Voices Project Competition.  Her manuscript was selected, resulting in the publication of her collection of poetry, The Second Thing I Remember (New Rivers Press). 

1993: career change.  Hougen began teaching part-time at Northwestern College in St. Paul where she is currently an Assistant Professor of English.  She teaches composition and creative writing courses, advises the literary magazine, and still camps out in coffee shops talking to students and grading stacks of papers.

 Since the early ‘90’s, Hougen’s own journey of Christian spiritual formation was deepening through authors such as Brennan Manning, Henri Nouwen, Thomas Merton and others and through her community at Church of the Open Door.  The core of her study and transformation centered on true-self/false-self theology, which grew into a non-fiction book project.  After five years of writing and escapades with various book publishers, her book, Transformed Into Fire: An Invitation to Life in the True Self, found a home with Kregel Publications and was released in early 2003. 

Today, Hougen lives in St. Paul, enjoying summer mornings reading on her patio and winter nights spent in front of the fireplace with friends.  She explores new writing projects, teaches at Northwestern, and leads workshops on writing and spiritual formation.