Teresa of Avila

Mirabai Starr

Mirabai Starr is an adjunct professor of philosophy and religious studies at the University of New Mexico. She has studied a wide variety of religious traditions, including Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, and Christianity. She is also the translator of Teresa of Ávila’s Interior Castle and The Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross. She lives in Taos, New Mexico.

Mother Tessa Bielecki

Mother Tessa Bielecki is the co-foundress and former abbess of the Spiritual Life Institute, a modern Carmelite community with retreat centers in Colorado and Ireland. She is the author of Holy Daring, Teresa of Avila: Ecstasy and Common Sense, and Teresa of Avila: Mystical Writings.

Teresa of Avila

Teresa of Avila lived in Spain in the early 1500s. At age twenty, she joined a convent, giving up the idea of marriage as too enslaving for women of her day. Her time at the convent was not without its challenges—first an illness overtook her for three years, and after she recovered she readily found many distractions from prayer. A profound mystical experience changed the course of her life, however, and she became the founder of many reformed monasteries.

"Mirabai Starr's translation is a work for our time. She has given Teresa a presence and a voice in a modern era. Saint Teresa no doubt chose Mirabai, for her talent with language and Spanish translation is pure genius." —Caroline Myss, author of Entering the Castle and Anatomy of the Spirit

"Mirabai Starr's translation makes totally accessible this most famous (and attractive) saint. The writing has such a delightful sparkle you can't help falling in love with Teresa." —John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

"Saint Teresa of Ávila has long deserved a far wider readership than existing translations have secured for her. She wrote, as she undoubtedly spoke, in an unapologetically vernacular Spanish—idiomatic, vivid, and informal—and Mirabai Starr's rendering is all of that. The clarity and vitality of this new Autobiography will bring a whole new generation of seekers into the blessed presence of 'La Madre.'" —Carol Lee Flinders, author of Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics and Enduring Lives: Portraits of Women and Faith in Action

"Saints' lives are not always page-turners. But Mirabai Starr´s wonderfully fresh translation of the Vida of Teresa of Ávila captures the passionate spirituality, the talent for intimacy, the frankly fallible humanity that attracted her contemporaries to the woman Starr describes, in her introduction, as 'not an obvious saint.' Tessa Bielecki´s deeply-felt foreword is one inducement among many to take this welcome new translation to heart." —Cathleen Medwick, author of Teresa of Ávila: The Progress of a Soul