Fanny Howe



Fanny Howe (born October 15, 1940 in Buffalo, New York) is an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She has written many novels in prose collection. Howe was awarded the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, presented annually by the Poetry Foundation to a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.

Life
Her father was a lawyer, and her Irish-born mother was an actress at the Abbey Theatre of Dublin for some time. Her sister is Susan Howe, who also became a poet. Fanny Howe grew up with her family in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

As a Civil Rights activist, she met and married the activist Carl Senna, who is of African-Mexican descent and is also a poet and writer. They are the parents of the novelist Danzy Senna, Lucien Quincy Senna, and Maceo Senna.

She has taught at Tufts University, Emerson College, Columbia University, Yale University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is professor emerita of Writing and Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Career
Howe has become one of the most widely read of American experimental poets. She has also published several novels, including Lives of the Spirit/Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken (2005), and The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life (2003), a collection of essays.

Poet Michael Palmer: Fanny Howe employs a sometimes fierce, always passionate, spareness in her lifelong parsing of the exchange between matter and spirit. Her work displays as well a political urgency, that is to say, a profound concern for social justice and for the soundness and fate of the polis, the "city on a hill". Writes Emerson, The poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty. Here's the luminous and incontrovertible proof.

Joshua Glenn: "Fanny Howe isn't part of the local literary canon. But her seven novels about interracial love and utopian dreaming offer a rich social history of Boston in the 1960s and '70s."

Howe's prose poems, "Everything's a Fake" and "Doubt", were selected by David Lehman for the anthology Great American Prose Poems: from Poe to the Present (2003). Her poem "Catholic" was selected by Lyn Hejinian for the 2004 volume of The Best American Poetry.

Howe's Selected Poems won the 2001 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. On the Ground was on the international shortlist for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. Howe received the 2009 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

Poetry

 * Eggs: poems, Houghton Mifflin, 1970
 * The Amerindian Coastline Poem, Telephone Books Press, 1975, ISBN 0916382087
 * Poem from a Single Pallet, Kelsey Street Press, 1980, ISBN 0932716105
 * Alsace-Lorraine, Telephone Books Press, 1982, ISBN 0916382281
 * For Erato: The Meaning of Life, 1984
 * Robeson Street, Alice James Books, 1985, ISBN 9780914086598
 * Introduction to the World, Figures, 1986, ISBN 0935724214
 * The Lives of a Spirit, Sun & Moon Press, 1987, ISBN 0940650959
 * The Vineyard, Lost Roads Publishers, 1988, ISBN 9780918786371
 * [sic], Parentheses Writing Series, October 1988, ISBN 9780962086229
 * The End, Littoral Books, 1992 ISBN 1557131457
 * The Quietist, O Books, 1992, ISBN 9781882022120
 * O'Clock, Reality Street, 1995, ISBN 9781874400073
 * One Crossed Out, Graywolf Press, 1997, ISBN 9781555972592
 * Forged, Post-Apollo Press, 1999, ISBN 9780942996364
 * Selected Poems, University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 9780520222632 (shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize)
 * Tis of Thee, Atelos, 2003, ISBN 9781891190162
 * On the Ground, Graywolf Press, 2004, ISBN 9781555974039 (also shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize)
 * The Lives of a Spirit/Glasstown: Where Something Got Broken Nightboat Books, 2005, ISBN 9780976718512
 * The Lyrics, Graywolf Press, 2007, ISBN 9781555974725
 * (with Henia Karmel-Wolfe and Ilona Karmel) A Wall of Two: Poems of Resistance and Suffering from Kraków to Buchenwald and Beyond, University of California Press, 2007, ISBN 9780520251366
 * Come and See: Poems, Graywolf Press, 2011, ISBN 9781555975869
 * Come and See: Poems, Graywolf Press, 2011, ISBN 9781555975869

Fiction

 * Forty Whacks, Houghton Mifflin, 1969, ISBN 0575005602
 * First Marriage HarperCollins, 1974, ISBN 0380018500
 * Bronte Wilde, Avon Books, 1976, ISBN 9780380005482
 * The White Slave, Avon Books, 1980, ISBN 9780380455911
 * The Deep North Sun & Moon Press, 1988, ISBN 9781557130259
 * Famous Questions, Ballantine Books, 1989, ISBN 9780345361776
 * Saving History, Sun & Moon Press, 1993, ISBN 9781557131003
 * Nod, Sun & Moon Press, 1998, ISBN 1557133077
 * Indivisible, Semiotext(e), 2000, ISBN 9781584350095
 * Economics: Stories, Flood Editions, 2002, ISBN 9780971005945
 * Radical Love: 5 Novels, Nightboat Books, 2006, ISBN 9780976718536
 * Economics: Stories, Flood Editions, 2002, ISBN 9780971005945
 * Radical Love: 5 Novels, Nightboat Books, 2006, ISBN 9780976718536

Young Adult Fiction

 * The Blue Hills, Avon, 1981, ISBN 0380789981
 * Yeah, But Avon/Flare, August 1982, ISBN 9780380791866
 * Radio City Avon/Flare book, 1984, ISBN 9780380860258
 * Taking Care, Avon Books, 1985, ISBN 9780380898640
 * Race of the Radical, Viking Kestrel, 1985, ISBN 9780670805570
 * What Did I Do Wrong?, Illustrator Colleen McCallion, Flood Editions, 2009, ISBN 9780981952000

Essays

 * The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation, Graywolf Press, 2009, ISBN 9781555975203
 * The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation, Graywolf Press, 2009, ISBN 9781555975203

Reviews

 * "On the Day the Blood Let Fall", Scott Bentley, Jacket 25, February 2004
 * "The Clarity of Fanny Howe's Debut", Kimberly Lamm, University of Washington, Titanic Operas
 * "Fellow Travelers", Karen Volkman, Boston Review, February/March 2004