Paula Holmes-Eber

At age nineteen, while studying Italian in Florence, Paula Holmes-Eber decided to hop on a train to Morocco, inspiring a life-long career as an anthropologist and professor, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa. She is the author of seven nonfiction books—all of which explore culture and its influence on our experiences and perspectives.

Her first book, "Daughters of Tunis" has become a standard text in a number of courses on women in the Muslim world. Her later books, such as "Culture in Conflict" and "Warriors or Peacekeepers" (co-authored with Kjetil Enstad), focus on the way that our own culture limits and influences our understanding of other cultures, often fueling misinterpretations, conflict and war.

Her most recent book, "Breathtaking", presents a new twist on traditional approaches to learning about other cultures. Co-authored with Paula’s husband, Lorenz Eber, "Breathtaking" explores the world from the handlebars of a bike. A memoir of the Eber family’s sixteen month cycling and camping tour around the world with their two daughters, the book shares the family’s cross-cultural adventures and hilarious intercultural misunderstandings across four continents and twenty-four countries.

Although Paula has been sighted sleeping in a Mongolian ger, sharing a traditional dinner of grilled sheep’s head with a Tunisian family, participating in a Tongan kava ceremony and even catapulting in a Navy jet off the deck of a US aircraft carrier, she does enjoy returning to her home on a small island near Seattle, WA, where she lives with her husband, Lorenz.