Fanny Howe

Fanny Howe is the author of more than twenty books of poetry and prose. Howe grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and studied at Stanford University. Her major works include the poetry collections One Crossed Out, Gone, and Second Childhood; the novels Nod, The Deep North, and Indivisible; and collected essays such as The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life and The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation.

Howe received praise and official recognition: she was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize by the Poetry Foundation. She also received the Gold Medal for Poetry from the Commonwealth Club of California. In addition, her Selected Poems received the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets for the most outstanding book of poetry published in 2000. She was a finalist for the 2015 International Booker Prize. She also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Poetry Foundation, the California Arts Council, and the Village Voice.

Howe taught for almost twenty years in Boston, at MIT, Tufts University, and elsewhere, before taking a job at the University of California at San Diego, where she was professor emerita. In 2012 she was the inaugural visiting writer in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Her papers are housed at Stanford University. Howe died at the age of eighty-four on July 8, 2025.