LeAnne Howe
Encyclopedia
LeAnne Howe is an author and scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
. An enrolled member of the Choctaw
Nation of Oklahoma, Howe's work has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies. Her book Shell Shaker
received the Before Columbus Foundation
's American Book Award
for 2002.
Howe is the screenwriter and on-camera narrator for the 90-minute PBS documentary Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire. The documentary takes Howe to the North Carolina homelands of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
to discover how their fusion of tourism, community, and cultural preservation is the key to the tribe's health in the 21st century.
She is also writer/co-producer of a new documentary project, Playing Pastime: American Indian Fast-Pitch Softball, and Survival, with three-time Emmy award-winning filmmaker, James Fortier. The story is about the southeastern tribes and Indians who have been playing baseball and fast-pitch softball since the 1880s in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. Production began in August 2004.
Howe's first novel, Shell Shaker
(Aunt Lute Books
, San Francisco), received an American Book Award in 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation. The novel was a finalist for the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award, and awarded Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year, 2002, Creative Prose. Equinoxes Rouge, the French translation, was the 2004 finalist for Prix Médicis étranger, one of France's top literary awards.
Evidence of Red (Salt Publishing
, UK, 2005), a collection of poetry and prose, rails against lost lands and lovers, heralds death and mad warriors, and celebrates a doomed love affair between Hollywood's invented characters: "Noble Savage" and "Indian Sports Mascot". This collection of lyric and prose poems won the Oklahoma States Book Award in 2005. Portions of the book will be featured in the third edition of The World Is a Text (Prentice Hall, 2008) by Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader.
Miko Kings, an Indian baseball novel set in Ada, Oklahoma in 1907 and also 1969 and 2006, was published in 2007 by Aunt Lute Books. The story centers on Choctaw journalist Lena Coulter and on Hope Little Leader, the Choctaw pitcher who had the most contorted windup in Indian baseball history. Other characters are slugger Blip Bleen, catcher Batteries Goingsnake, first baseman Lucius Mummy, also known as "the barrel" and Ezol Day, a Choctaw postal clerk in Indian Territory who tries to patent her Choctaw theory of relativity and inadvertently changes the course of history for the Indians and their baseball team. "This is where the ‘twentieth-century Indian’ really begins", says Henri Day, "not in the abstractions of Congressional Acts—but on the prairie diamond."
Though she is best known for her fiction, Howe is also an accomplished scholar. She has authored a book chapter on Choctaw history, contributed two important essays on her theory of "tribalography", and collaborated on literary criticism projects with Craig Howe (no relation), Harvey Markowitz, and Dean Rader
. Howe has been a visiting professor at Carleton College
, Grinnell College
, Sinte Gleska University
in Mission, South Dakota, on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, Wake Forest University
, North Carolina, and at the University of Cincinnati in the Women's Studies Department. In 2003 she was the Louis D. Rubin Jr. Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University
, Roanoke, Virginia. In 2006-07 she was the John and Renee Grisham’s Writer-in-Residence, University of Mississippi
, Oxford, MS. In May 2008, Howe was awarded a Poetry Fellowship at Soul Mountain Retreat, sponsored by former Connecticut poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson in East Haddam, Connecticut. In March 2010, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story was the 2009-10 Read-in Selection for Hampton University
, Hampton VA. Hampton University also held a mini-literary conference on Miko Kings. Ten papers and 3 panel discussions were given on the novel during the conference. In March 2011, Howe was awarded the Tulsa Library Trust’s “American Indian Author Award” at the Central Library, Tulsa Oklahoma.
In 2010-2011, Howe was a J. William Fulbright Scholar in Amman, Jordan where she taught American Indian and American literatures at the University of Jordan
, Amman. She was also researching a new novel set in both Transjordan, 1917 and in Allen, Oklahoma, 2011. Currently Howe is a Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in American Indian Studies, English, and Theater.
Students who have worked with Howe have gone on to work for the Chicago Sun Times, and The New York Times. They are both native and non natives who have published memoir, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Some former students are now working in professional theater companies, while others are teachers.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...
. An enrolled member of the Choctaw
Choctaw
The Choctaw are a Native American people originally from the Southeastern United States...
Nation of Oklahoma, Howe's work has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies. Her book Shell Shaker
Shell Shaker
Shell Shaker is a novel by writer and playwright LeAnne Howe, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. The novel is notable for the way it interweaves two tales of murder involving flawed Choctaw political leaders set over 200 years apart in the mid 18th century and 1991, connected...
received the Before Columbus Foundation
Before Columbus Foundation
The Before Columbus Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1976 by Ishmael Reed, Victor Hernández Cruz, Shawn Wong and Rudolfo Anaya to be "a multi-ethnic organizing dedicated to promoting a pan-cultural view of America," especially through the promotion of multicultural writers.One of...
's American Book Award
American Book Award
The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...
for 2002.
Life
Howe is an author, playwright, and scholar. Born and educated in Oklahoma, she writes fiction, creative non-fiction, plays, poetry, and screenplays that primarily deal with American Indian experiences. She has read her fiction and been an invited lecturer in Japan, Jordan, Israel, Romania, and Spain. Founder and director of WagonBurner Theatre Troop, her plays have been produced in Los Angeles, New York City, New Mexico, Maine, Texas, and Colorado.Howe is the screenwriter and on-camera narrator for the 90-minute PBS documentary Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire. The documentary takes Howe to the North Carolina homelands of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians
The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians , is a federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States of America, who are descended from Cherokee who remained in the Eastern United States while others moved, or were forced to relocate, to the west in the 19th century. The history of the...
to discover how their fusion of tourism, community, and cultural preservation is the key to the tribe's health in the 21st century.
She is also writer/co-producer of a new documentary project, Playing Pastime: American Indian Fast-Pitch Softball, and Survival, with three-time Emmy award-winning filmmaker, James Fortier. The story is about the southeastern tribes and Indians who have been playing baseball and fast-pitch softball since the 1880s in Indian Territory, now Oklahoma. Production began in August 2004.
Howe's first novel, Shell Shaker
Shell Shaker
Shell Shaker is a novel by writer and playwright LeAnne Howe, an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. The novel is notable for the way it interweaves two tales of murder involving flawed Choctaw political leaders set over 200 years apart in the mid 18th century and 1991, connected...
(Aunt Lute Books
Aunt Lute Books
Aunt Lute Books is a multicultural feminist press whose mission is to "publish literature by women whose voices have been traditionally under-represented in mainstream and small press publishing" and "distribute literature that expresses the true complexity of women’s lives and the possibilities...
, San Francisco), received an American Book Award in 2002 from the Before Columbus Foundation. The novel was a finalist for the 2003 Oklahoma Book Award, and awarded Wordcraft Circle Writer of the Year, 2002, Creative Prose. Equinoxes Rouge, the French translation, was the 2004 finalist for Prix Médicis étranger, one of France's top literary awards.
Evidence of Red (Salt Publishing
Salt Publishing
Salt Publishing is an independent publisher whose origins date back to 1990 when poet John Kinsella launched Salt Magazine in Western Australia. The journal rapidly developed an international reputation as a leading publisher of new poetry and poetics...
, UK, 2005), a collection of poetry and prose, rails against lost lands and lovers, heralds death and mad warriors, and celebrates a doomed love affair between Hollywood's invented characters: "Noble Savage" and "Indian Sports Mascot". This collection of lyric and prose poems won the Oklahoma States Book Award in 2005. Portions of the book will be featured in the third edition of The World Is a Text (Prentice Hall, 2008) by Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader.
Miko Kings, an Indian baseball novel set in Ada, Oklahoma in 1907 and also 1969 and 2006, was published in 2007 by Aunt Lute Books. The story centers on Choctaw journalist Lena Coulter and on Hope Little Leader, the Choctaw pitcher who had the most contorted windup in Indian baseball history. Other characters are slugger Blip Bleen, catcher Batteries Goingsnake, first baseman Lucius Mummy, also known as "the barrel" and Ezol Day, a Choctaw postal clerk in Indian Territory who tries to patent her Choctaw theory of relativity and inadvertently changes the course of history for the Indians and their baseball team. "This is where the ‘twentieth-century Indian’ really begins", says Henri Day, "not in the abstractions of Congressional Acts—but on the prairie diamond."
Though she is best known for her fiction, Howe is also an accomplished scholar. She has authored a book chapter on Choctaw history, contributed two important essays on her theory of "tribalography", and collaborated on literary criticism projects with Craig Howe (no relation), Harvey Markowitz, and Dean Rader
Dean Rader
Dean Rader is an American writer, blogger, poet, and professor who teaches at the University of San Francisco. He is primarily known for his scholarly work on Native American poetry. In 2008, his blog, , got some attention in the blogosphere when one of his posts, ]'s State of the Union Speech,...
. Howe has been a visiting professor at Carleton College
Carleton College
Carleton College is an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The college enrolls 1,958 undergraduate students, and employs 198 full-time faculty members. In 2012 U.S...
, Grinnell College
Grinnell College
Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, U.S. known for its strong tradition of social activism. It was founded in 1846, when a group of pioneer New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College....
, Sinte Gleska University
Sinte Gleska University
Sinte Gleska University is a four-year private American Indian tribal college, located in Mission, South Dakota, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, a Brulé Lakota Indian Reservation...
in Mission, South Dakota, on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University
Wake Forest University is a private, coeducational university in the U.S. state of North Carolina, founded in 1834. The university received its name from its original location in Wake Forest, north of Raleigh, North Carolina, the state capital. The Reynolda Campus, the university's main campus, is...
, North Carolina, and at the University of Cincinnati in the Women's Studies Department. In 2003 she was the Louis D. Rubin Jr. Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University
Hollins University
Hollins University is a four-year institution of higher education, a private university located on a campus on the border of Roanoke County, Virginia and Botetourt County, Virginia...
, Roanoke, Virginia. In 2006-07 she was the John and Renee Grisham’s Writer-in-Residence, University of Mississippi
University of Mississippi
The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...
, Oxford, MS. In May 2008, Howe was awarded a Poetry Fellowship at Soul Mountain Retreat, sponsored by former Connecticut poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson in East Haddam, Connecticut. In March 2010, Miko Kings: An Indian Baseball Story was the 2009-10 Read-in Selection for Hampton University
Hampton University
Hampton University is a historically black university located in Hampton, Virginia, United States. It was founded by black and white leaders of the American Missionary Association after the American Civil War to provide education to freedmen.-History:...
, Hampton VA. Hampton University also held a mini-literary conference on Miko Kings. Ten papers and 3 panel discussions were given on the novel during the conference. In March 2011, Howe was awarded the Tulsa Library Trust’s “American Indian Author Award” at the Central Library, Tulsa Oklahoma.
In 2010-2011, Howe was a J. William Fulbright Scholar in Amman, Jordan where she taught American Indian and American literatures at the University of Jordan
University of Jordan
The University of Jordan , is a government-supported University located in Amman, Jordan...
, Amman. She was also researching a new novel set in both Transjordan, 1917 and in Allen, Oklahoma, 2011. Currently Howe is a Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in American Indian Studies, English, and Theater.
Students who have worked with Howe have gone on to work for the Chicago Sun Times, and The New York Times. They are both native and non natives who have published memoir, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Some former students are now working in professional theater companies, while others are teachers.
See also
- List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
- Native American StudiesNative American StudiesNative American Studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines the history, culture, politics, issues and contemporary experience of Native peoples in North America, or, taking a hemispheric approach, the Americas...