Catherine Hiller

Hiller's new novel, Cybill Unbound (Heliotrope Books, February 14, 2023) is about the sexual adventures of an older woman.

In 2011, Hiller, an environmental activist, was arrested with her son Jonathan Warnow in Washington, D.C. while protesting the Keystone Pipeline. She continues to work for policies that combat climate change and promote social justice. Hiller edited the medical newsletter Telemedicine Briefings, a Mary Ann Liebert newsletter, from April 2020-April 2021.

In 2020, she won first place in the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, sponsored by Poets & Patrons, for a poem she wrote 50 years ago and never tried to publish.

In 2018, Hiller published The Feud (Heliotrope Books), a novel about a deadly workplace enmity that climaxes when the two women find themselves alone in a stuck elevator.

On April 20, 2015 ("National Weed Day"), Hiller's memoir Just Say Yes was published by Heliotrope Books. Marketed as the first "marijuana memoir" for mainstream audiences, the book illuminated Hiller's habit of smoking cannabis nearly every day for fifty years. She presents her narrative in reverse chronology, beginning in the present day and getting younger in each subsequent chapter.

In 2012, Hiller published The Adventures of Sid Sawyer (Armadillo Central), a retelling of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Events from Twain's classic are revisited from the viewpoint of Tom's half-brother Sid, who in Hiller's version is the village genius while Tom is just a fun-loving bully. Ironically, twelve years before Hiller released the novel, minister and television personality Stuart Briscoe wrote the following in his essay "Why Invite Trouble": "It is impossible to imagine a book called The Adventures of Sid Sawyer. Who would want to read about a good kid who never got into trouble, never rocked a boat, never finagled his way out of a fix?"

Hiller published Skin: Sensual Tales (Carroll & Graf), a collection of thirteen short stories, in 1997. John Updike praised the book, saying that "Catherine Hiller writes with a fine directness and clarity ... Good, brave, and joyful writing."Publishers Weekly said of the collection, "Though obviously not for the prudish, these nicely observed, gently ironic tales are a celebration of life inside and outside the epidermis." Two stories from the collection, "Skin" and "My Lover's Family", won PEN Syndicated Fiction awards.

With Beat Generation scholar Regina Weinreich, Hiller also made the documentary Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider. This portrait chronicling the life of Bowles, the expatriate author and composer of The Sheltering Sky, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in 1994. It was released theatrically in twenty cities around the United States and broadcast on the Sundance Channel. The New York Times wrote that the film "does an especially good job of evoking the texture of Mr. Bowles's complicated marriage to his fellow author, Jane Auer Bowles". New York magazine called it "a fascinating, funny, and insightful documentary." The New York Post hailed the movie as "spellbinding", while The Washington Post called it "a fabulous film", adding, "You want to see it again and again."

Hiller's third novel, California Time, centers on a New York family transplanted to the West Coast. (St. Martin's Press, 1993) Critical reaction to the book was mixed, with Booklist and Library Journal giving it a rave while Publishers Weekly and Kirkus believed it paled in comparison to the author's earlier work.

Credited as Catherine Warnow, Hiller co-produced and co-directed two acclaimed documentary films. She made Do Not Enter: The Visa War Against Ideas with distinguished producer Robert Richter. The film investigated the far-reaching effects of the McCarran Walter Act, which made it difficult for politically left-wing activists such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Dario Fo to visit the United States. Marquez, Fuentes, and Fo appeared in the documentary. Do Not Enter aired on PBS in 1986 and won a Blue Ribbon Award at the American Film and Video Festival. It was also nominated for Best Documentary at the Chicago International Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival. The film was shown to members of Congress, helping to influence amendments made to McCarran Walter in 1991 which largely repealed the Act.

Hiller is the author of six books of adult fiction and two children's books, Argentaybee and the Boonie (1979) and Abracatabby (1981). Her first novel was the erotic drama An Old Friend from High School (1978), about a housewife who connects with her former friend only to start a secret love affair. The second, 17 Morton Street, was published by St. Martin's Press in 1990 and follows the love lives of three quirky sisters in New York. It became an official Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Kirkus Reviews called 17 Morton Street "an accomplished, fast-moving comedy of errors." Barbara Raskin praised the book in The Washington Post: "Catherine Hiller's writing explodes with surprising insights, juicy characterizations, and familial truths." Novelist and book critic Carolyn See said, "Catherine Hiller's voice is both fresh and very beautiful. She writes of the great dilemmas of our time - love and loss, and the wonderful ambivalence of family - with a deft mind and sure hand."

Hiller's short pieces have been published in The New York Times Sunday Review, The Westchester Review, The Antioch Review, AARP the Magazine, Redbook, and various websites including NextTribe, The Girlfriend, Purple Clover, and Green Flower. She has written several pieces for Penthouse including: "The Perfect Aphrodisiac" (February 1979); "Monogamy: The Last Taboo" (October 1979); "Sexenders" (June 1980); "Tennis Mother" (December 1980); "The Sex Tax" (April 1981); "Hypersex" (August 1981); "The Waving" (September 1981); and "The Embryo Patrol" (October 1981). The last was written at the suggestion of the National Organization for Women and was republished online by Ms. magazine in June 2022, after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.

In 1969, while with her then-fiancé, film editor Stan Warnow, Hiller attended the legendary Woodstock music festival with the documentary film crew. A chapter in Just Say Yes chronicles her memories of making that epochal weekend.

Catherine Hiller (born November 16, 1946) is an American author and filmmaker, best known for writing Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir. The first memoir about long-term cannabis use designed for a mainstream audience, Just Say Yes attracted national attention, being featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and Marie Claire magazine among other media outlets. In 2015, Hiller publicly "came out" as a cannabis user, saying that she has smoked marijuana almost every day for fifty years.