Rebecca Gayle Howell | |
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 Credit: Victoria Marie Bee | |
| Born | August 10, 1975 Lexington, Kentucky |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Literary movement | Southern |
Rebecca Gayle Howell (born August 10, 1975, in Lexington, Kentucky) [1] is an American writer, literary translator, and editor. [2] In 2019 she was named a United States Artists Fellow. [3]
Howell was born to a working-class family in Lexington, Kentucky on August 10, 1975. She earned her BA and her MA at the University of Kentucky, her MFA at Drew University, and her PhD at Texas Tech University.[ citation needed ]
Her first book Render / An Apocalypse was selected by Nick Flynn for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center's First Book Prize (2013). Render / An Apocalypse also received a cover review in The Los Angeles Times [4] , The Nautilus Award, [5] and a finalist shortlist for Foreword Review's INDIES Book of the Year. [6] In 2016, Burnaway: Art of the South named it a Best Book of the Year. In 2020 literary critic Jennifer Ashton featured Render / An Apocalypse in her chapter "Ecology, Ethics, and the Apocalyptic Lyric in Recent American Poetry" for Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press). [7]
American Purgatory, her second book, was selected by Don Share for The Sexton Prize [8] and was published in both Great Britain and the United States in 2017. American Purgatory was also a finalist for Foreword Review's INDIES Book of the Year. [9] The book was named a must read by The Courier-Journal, The Millions [10] and Poetry London. Other reviewers included ArtsATL, Nashville Review,The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and The Rumpus.
In March 2023, Howell released What Things Cost: an anthology for the people, which she co-edited with Ashley M. Jones and associate editor Emily Jalloul (University Press of Kentucky). [11] The collection received a starred review from Publishers Weekly [12] , a notable anthology for 2023 by Poetry & Writers [13] , a best poetry book of 2023 by Ms. Magazine [14] , a best Southern book of 2023 by Southern Review of Books [15] , and the 2023 INDIES GOLD Best Anthology of the Year by Foreword Reviews. [16] What Things Cost is called by the publisher, "the first major anthology of labor writing in nearly a century," and all proceeds go to benefit The Poor People's Campaign.[ citation needed ]
Howell is the English-language translator of Amal al-Jubouri's verse memoir of the Iraq War, Hagar Before the Occupation / Hagar After the Occupation (Alice James Books, 2011). This translation, carried out in collaboration with Husam Qaisi and al-Jubouri, was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award [17] and the U.K.'s Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. [18] International reviewers included The Wall Street Journal'sMint [19] and Asymptote. [20] Hagar received a Best Book of Poetry for 2011 from Library Journal and a Best Book by an Arab Woman from Book Riot in 2017. [21]
Howell's El interior de la ballena / The belly of the whale is the bilingual edition of Claudia Prado's award-winning collection of Patagonian agrarian poetry, released in spring 2024 by Texas Tech University Press. [22] Howell's and Prado's versions have appeared in The Sewanee Review, The Common,The Southern Review, and elsewhere.
In 2019, she began a collaboration with classical composer Reena Esmail. A Winter Breviary, their solstice carol cycle, was published by Oxford University Press in 2022. [23] The third of these carols, "The Unexpected Early Hour," was premiered at the Los Angeles Master Chorale Festival of Carols, December 4, 2021, [24] then recorded and broadcast by the BBC on December 24, 2021. In 2022, The Gesualdo Six recorded the entire cycle for Choral Music from Oxford with the Gesualdo Six [25] , and in 2023 St. Martin's Choir recorded the cycle as the title tracks for A Winter Breviary: Choral Works for Christmas (Resonus Classics). [26] The work has been performed and toured by choirs like The Gesualdo Six, The Sixteen, The Yale Ensemble, and Voces8. In 2023 "The Unexpected Early Hour" was also collected in Carols for Choirs 6 (Oxford University Press). [27]
Howell is the poetry editor of Oxford American . [28] Since 2014, Howell has published writing by poets like Nathaniel Mackey, [29] Nikki Giovanni, [30] Tarfia Faizullah, [31] Tyehimba Jess, [32] C.D. Wright, [33] Kwame Dawes, [34] Ashley M. Jones, [35] Ada Limón, [36] Dean Young, [37] Crystal Wilkinson, [38] Naomi Shihab Nye, [39] and Jericho Brown. [40] [ better source needed ] In 2016, Howell and her fellow editors received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence, marking the first time in the magazine's 24-year history to receive the award. [41]
Howell is also an assistant editor and letterpress printer for Q Avenue Books and a contributing editor for Pushcart Press. In 2015 she began freelance editing place-based poetry collections, including Crystal Wilkinson's Perfect Black (University Press of Kentucky, 2021); Julia Bouwsma's Work By Bloodlight (Cider Press, 2017); Nomi Stone's Kill Class (Tupelo Press, 2019); and Savannah Sipple's WWJD And Other Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019). In 2017, she founded Fireside Industries, an imprint of the University Press of Kentucky. Among the titles Howell published with Fireside are first books by Tanya Berry and Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle.
Di Brandt often stylized as di brandt, is a Canadian poet and scholar from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She became Winnipeg's first Poet Laureate in 2018.
Rita Frances Dove is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing.
Nick Flynn is an American writer, playwright, and poet.
Ruth Stone was an American poet.
Megan Frances Edwards is an American writer and editor.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo is a British author and academic. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other jointly won the Booker Prize in 2019 alongside Margaret Atwood's The Testaments, making her the first Black woman to win the Booker. Evaristo is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London and President of the Royal Society of Literature, the second woman and the first black person to hold the role since it was founded in 1820.
Samantha Lee Howe is a British novellist and screenwriter. She writes horror and fantasy under the pen name Sam Stone. She is best known for her 2020 psychological thriller novel The Stranger in Our Bed, published by HarperCollins imprint One More Chapter. Howe is the commissioning editor of Telos Publishing imprint Telos Moonrise.
Dragon Moon Press is an American independent publishing company, specializing in science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy and cross-genre novels. It was founded in 1993 by Gwen Gades, and released its first book in 1998.
Ron Whitehead is an American poet, author and activist. Whitehead was born on a farm in Kentucky, but traveled to the University of Louisville and Oxford University to pursue his academic interests.
Peter Grandbois is an American writer, editor, academic, fencer and fencing coach.
Ire'ne Lara Silva is a Chicana feminist poet and writer from Austin, Texas. Her parents were migrant farmworkers. She has published numerous works of poetry and her short story collection won the 2013 Premio Aztlán Literary Prize. A central theme of her work is Indigenous survival and perseverance despite colonization: "let's empower ourselves with that knowledge."
Trista Mateer is an American writer and visual artist from Westminster, Maryland. She won the Goodreads Choice Award in 2015 for poetry with The Dogs I Have Kissed. Her collection Aphrodite Made Me Do It was also voted one of the best books of the year by Goodreads users in 2019. She has been invited to speak on multiple occasions about cultivating a social media presence for poetry and for the importance of queer representation in media. Her decade-spanning poetry collection "I Swear Somewhere This Works" was awarded the Bronze in LGBT+ Nonfiction for the 26th annual Foreword INDIES Best Books of the Year Awards.
Amal Al-Jubouri is an Iraqi writer, poet, translator, journalist and publisher.
Path of the Puma: The Remarkable Resilience of the Mountain Lion, by Jim Williams, is a non-fiction book presenting the research of the author, a wildlife biologist and supervisor for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks' Region 1 in Kalispell. Williams also discusses DNA research conducted by others on these animals, and makes the case for coexistence with these big, wild cats.
John Patrick James is an American poet, critic, and digital collagist. He is the author of The Milk Hours, selected by Henri Cole for the 2018 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and forthcoming from Milkweed Editions. He is also the author of Chthonic, winner of the 2014 CutBank Chapbook Competition. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Best New Poets 2013 and 2016, Best American Poetry 2017, and other publications.
Patrick Madden is a Fulbright Fellow, writer, and professor at Brigham Young University and the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Benjamin S. Grossberg is an American poet and educator.
Sidney Thompson is an American author, academic, and writing consultant who teaches at Texas Christian University.
Miranda E. Shaw is an American author and scholar of Vajrayana Buddhism. Her book, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism, won the James Henry Breasted Prize, the Tricycle Prize for Excellence in Buddhist Scholarship, and the Critics' Choice Most Acclaimed Academic Book award in 1995. Shaw earned her undergraduate degree from Ohio State University, a Master of Theology (MTS) from Harvard Divinity School, a Master of Arts in Religion (MA), and a doctorate in the study of religion (PhD) from Harvard University. Shaw is an Emerita faculty member of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Richmond.
Luke Francis Beirne is an Irish-Canadian writer. Beirne was born in Ireland but moved to Canada at a young age. He now lives in Saint John, New Brunswick. He is the son of author Gerard Beirne and Dr. Eilish Cleary.
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