LeAnne Howe

Fiction Writer

Athens, GA
Georgia US

Author's Bio

LeAnne Howe (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) is the author of novels, plays, essays, screenplays and poetry. Her latest book, Savage Conversations, 2019, Coffee House Press, is poetic fiction in play form in which Mary Todd Lincoln is haunted by her guilt, and she talks to an American Indian spirit, nightly.  Howe is the author of Shell Shaker, fiction, and Miko Kings, an Indian Baseball Story, (fiction), and co-editor of Seeing Red, Hollywood’s Pixeled Skins: American Indians and Film, Michigan State University Press, 2013.  She's won multiple national and international awards including the 2012 USA Ford Fellowship, a 50,000 award from United States Artists organization, Fulbright Scholarship, Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers Circle of the Americas, 2012. She’s the Eidson Distinguished Professor in the Creative Writing program in English at the University of Georgia, Athens.

Writers Retreats: 

Publications & Prizes

Books:
Savage Conversations (Coffee House Press, 2019)
,
Miko Kings An Indian Baseball Story (Aunt Lute Books, 2007)
,
Shell Shaker (Aunt Lute Books, 2001)
Prizes won: 

2002 for Shell Shaker, Fiction, from Before Columbus Foundation, American Book Award, NYC. 2006 for Evidence of Red, Poetry, from the Oklahoma Book Award. 2010-2011 Awarded a J. William Fulbright Scholar, University of Jordan, Amman. 2012 Awarded the Tulsa Library Trust’s “American Indian Author Award” at Central Library, Tulsa, OK. 2012, Named United States Artists, Ford Fellow, United States Artists Foundation, Los Angeles, CA. 2012, Winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas.  In 2014 Howe received the Modern Language Association (MLA) Award for the first biennial prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages for Choctalking on Other Realities, and in 2015 she was awarded the Western Literature Association (WLA) Distinguished Achievement Award.

Personal Favorites

Favorite authors: 
Michael Ondaatje, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Joy Harjo, Tommy Orange, Natalie Diaz, CA Conrad, Magdalena Zurawski, Andrew Zawacki, Aruni Kashyup, Tayari Jones, Tyehimba Jess
What I'm reading now: 
Sacred Wilderness by Susan Power, The Whetting of Teeth by Jamaal May, s e l f - p o r t r a i t a s w i k i p e d i a e n t r y by Dean Rader, Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo, Margaritas and Redfish by Ken Hada, There, There by Tommy Orange

More Information

Gives readings: 
Yes
Travels for readings: 
Yes
Identifies as: 
Native American
Prefers to work with: 
Adults
Fluent in: 
English
Born in: 
Edmond, OK
Oklahoma
Raised in: 
Oklahoma City, OK
Oklahoma
Please note: All information in the Directory is provided by the listed writers or their representatives.
Last update: May 21, 2019