Judith Valente is a journalist and poet and the author of six spirituality books, including How to Live: What the Rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning & Community; The Art of Pausing: Meditations for the Overworked & Overwhelmed, and most recently, The Italian Soul: How to Savor the Full Joys of Life. She is also the author of three collections of poetry and edited an anthology of poems on finding the sacred in the everyday. Judith spent many years working as a journalist at such news organizations as The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and national PBS-TV where she covered religion news. She is a lay associate of Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine monastery in Atchison, KS, and has given retreats across the country on how to live a more contemplative life in the secular world. She also guides the annual “Benedictine Footprints” contemplative, cultural, culinary retreat and pilgrimage to lesser-known parts of Italy. She lives with her husband Charles Reynard in central Illinois and Abruzzo, Italy.