Rebecca Gayle Howell

Rebecca Gayle Howell is a graduate of the University of Kentucky (B.A., M.A.), Drew University (M.F.A.), and Texas Tech University (Ph.D.). She currently serves as an assistant professor in the Program in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas.

Howell has authored two award-winning novels-in-verse, American Purgatory (2017) and Render (2013). She also has translated Amal al-Jubouri’s verse memoir of the Iraq War, Hagar Before the Occupation / Hagar After the Occupation (2011). In addition to publishing, Howell collaborates with composer Reena Esmail to produce works for classical performance, including the widely performed A Winter Breviary (Oxford University Press). In addition, she serves as poetry editor of The Oxford American.

"I want to pursue art to understand something new, to experience revelation and change. So I listen deeply to the places that I’m in, and that listening is in collaboration with biodiversity, because biodiversity is always specific. That is not only the path toward healing and health for our planet, but it is the origin of human cultures’ diversities, which is also the path toward justice and healing for human cultures. So, that’s sort of the root of all of my work across form and genre, and the root of my relationship to art, which is prayer."

— Excerpt from Oral Memoirs of Rebecca Gayle Howell,
Baylor University Institute for Oral History

Her Best Book of the Year honors include those from The Best Translated Book Awards, Foreword INDIES Awards, The Nautilus Awards, The Sexton Prize (U.K.), The Banipal Prize (U.K.), Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, The Rumpus, and Poets & Writers. Among her other honors are the United States Artists Fellowship, the Carson McCullers Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.