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About Barbara
I’m Barbara Falconer Newhall and I’ve got a serious case of the human condition.
I’ve done it all: career, family, house, garden, and a prize-winning book, "Wrestling with God." The result: I'm a woman of years, lots of them, who can't help seeing things from the funny side.
Tucked away on this website are hundreds of riffs on life. I hope you’ll seek them out – and keep me company as I discover the humor, if not the meaning, in what life throws my way. Learn More
THE LATEST
Am I an Artist? Or Am I a Brand?
What kind of writer am I anyway? When I sit down to the keyboard, is it to write something beautiful — or something that will sell? Am I an artist? Or am I a brand? Read more.
BARBARA’S BOOK
★ Publishers Weekly, starred review
Any seeker of any faith will be blessed to read the words of this fine author and observer. Read more.
An inveterate doubter for most of her adult life, journalist Barbara Falconer Newhall embarks upon a quest to find a way to believe in God in the twenty-first century.
The result is Wrestling with God: Stories of Doubt and Faith, which details her search for the Divine in the lives of diverse Americans – from a fundamentalist Christian to a progressive Muslim to a Buddhist monk.Seekers of all persuasions will feel represented here, from priests, ministers, and rabbis to engineers, physicists, and avowed non-believers . . . a riverflow of a book. — Phil Cousineau, host of PBS’s Global Spirit
Recent Riffs on Life
Widowed: My Husband’s Stuff Is Still Here. I’ve Got My Reasons
Marriage is mostly about presence, about being there. Jon’s not here anymore. But his belongings are. Read more.
Huston Smith on the Most Important Thing You Can Do in 2025
After nearly a century devoted to the study of life and truth and the meaning of it all, religion scholar Huston Smith had some advice for his fans. Read more.
DON’T MISS!
My Killer Shoes — Brought Down to Size by Those Four-and-a-Half-Inch Heels
Dress shoes for women right now, as you may have noticed, sport heels that go on forever. Wedge heels, spike heels, stack heels – everywhere I look I see nothing but heels of skyscraper proportions built to lift their wearers four or even four-and-a-half inches off the ground. Read More.
Coleman Barks and Rumi — What a Few Lines of Poetry (and a Witch) Taught me
I’d always imagined Coleman Barks to be a stern scholarly type — till I emailed him for permission to use a few lines from his Rumi translations in my book. Read more.
Widowed: Her Stolen Car Came Back, but My Husband Didn’t . . . And All Shall Be Well?
The same death that took Jesus took my husband. Can we say then that all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well? Read more.