Augustine Wetta

Augustine Wetta is a Benedictine monk. He has two degrees in Theology from Oxford University, a BA in Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations from Rice University, and an MA in English from Middlebury College. For twenty years, he has taught English, Classics, and Theology at the Priory School, in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he also coaches rugby and serves as Director of Chaplaincy.

Although most of his writing has been for religious publications, he has read one of his short stories on NPR’s All Things Considered and published other essays and poems in America, The Tidelines Anthology, and On Human Flourishing: An Anthology of Poetry (McFarland). In 2014, he was awarded the Judson Jerome Poetry Scholarship and the Bill Baker Award for Fiction at the Antioch Writers Workshop (the first author in the history of the conference to win both). In 2015, he was awarded the Taliaferro Scholarship for Memoir Writers at the San Francisco Writers Conference, where he was also a finalist for the Emerging Writer Award.

Current projects include: THE EIGHTH ARROW, a fantasy prison break set in Dante’s Inferno, SAVING GRACE, an illustrated children’s book about a three-legged turtle, BenedicTEEN, a guide to the Rule of Saint Benedict for kids (also an award-winning blog), and HIS WIDE MOUTH HOME, a collection of short stories.

Augustine was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1971, but grew up in Galveston, Texas. Here he learned to surf and developed an enormous ego as a lifeguard on the Galveston Sheriff Department Beach Patrol. During this time, he also worked as a professional juggler (“The Flying Fettuccinne Brothers”) and as an archaeologist (at the Agora in Athens). He remains an avid surfer. In fact, if you Google “surfing monk” his is the first name that comes up—along with a news report about how he was nearly eaten by a shark.

https://www.augustinewetta.com