Noa Jones is an educator and a writer of creative fiction and nonfiction. She has been published in many magazines and newspapers including the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Tricycle, Vice, Shambhala Sun (now Lion’s Roar) and Conde Nast Traveler. Her notes and essays on the making of the film Travellers + Magicians were published as a book in 2004. She contributed a chapter to Global Perspectives on Spirituality in Education (Routledge, 2013) and Vogue Beauty. She is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships for her writing, including a Pushcart Prize nomination, First Prize in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, a Hemera Foundation artist fellowship, Bread Load Writers Conference scholarship, Djarassi Artist residency, Vermont Studio Center residency, and other awards.
She has a journalism degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a minor in arts management, an MFA in creative writing from Hunter College where she also taught creative writing. She has a Masters of Science Degree in Education (MSEd) from the University of Pennsylvania.
Noa led the establishment of Middle Way Education and the Middle Way School of the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York in 2017. She works closely with educators and dharma advisors on the curriculum framework and materials developed at the school and shared globally. She provides MWE’s advisory services to partner schools.
Noa was the editor of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s books What Makes You Not a Buddhist and The Guru Drinks Bourbon. In 2010, Rinpoche sent her to the Kingdom of Bhutan to develop education alternatives in association with the Ministry of Education, the Royal Education Council, monasteries, and a number of NGOs. The Druk 3020 curriculum she developed in 2011 helped introduced progressive education methods and content into the monastic setting.
