Rebecca Gayle Howell

Native to Kentucky, Rebecca Gayle Howell is a senior editor for the Oxford American. Her debut poetry collection, Render /An Apocalypse (2013), was selected by Nick Flynn for the Cleveland State University First Book Prize. Render was a finalist for ForeWord’s Book of the Year and was praised widely, most notably in a cover review by David L. Ulin for the Los Angeles Times, who called the collection “remarkable.” Howell is also the translator of Amal al-Jubouri’s verse memoir of the Iraq War, Hagar Before the Occupation/Hagar After the Occupation (Alice James Books, 2011). A Library Journal Best Book of Poetry for 2011, Hagar received critical acclaim throughout the U.S., the Middle East, and India and was shortlisted for Three Percent’s Best Translated Book Award. Among Howell’s honors are fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Carson McCullers Center, as well as a Pushcart Prize. Howell’s third book,  American Purgatory, a hybrid verse novella, was selected by Don Share for The Sexton Prize and published by London’s Eyewear Publishing in both the United Kingdom and the United States in early 2017.