ABOUT ME
Rachel Howard is a memoirist, fiction writer, critic, and arts journalist. Her widely praised first book, The Lost Night, a memoir about the emotional aftermath of her father’s unsolved murder, was described as “enthralling” by the New York Times. She is currently finishing a novel. She teaches creative writing at Warren Wilson College, outside Asheville, NC, and will serve as the interim director of the undergraduate writing department for 2012-2013. She also maintains home ties to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has been a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto, a workspace co-op.
Her fiction has been published in ZYZZYVA, Pif Magazine, and elsewhere. Her journalism has appeared in the New York Times, O, the Oprah Magazine, San Francisco Magazine, the Village Voice, Dance Magazine, and other publications. She received her MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson in 2009, and served as Warren Wilson’s Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow for 2011-2012.
In another life, Rachel would now be teaching kids how to dance and spin flags and other quasi-military props. She loved writing from age 9. Yet in high school, she was garnering lackluster grades, putting most of her energy into making saber line at the Concord Blue Devils Drum and Bugle Corps, and figuring she could pursue a career as a color guard instructor when she spotted a statewide writing contest sponsored by UC Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies. She won and was petitioned in to the program.
In college–while taking dance division ballet classes and working on the student newspaper–Rachel hatched the odd idea that she would support her literary ambitions with a day job as a dance critic. She began her journalism career as a staff arts writer for the Santa Barbara Independent and later the Orange County Register, then moved to San Francisco, attracted by the flourishing dance and writing scenes. From 2001 to 2003 she served as the dance critic of the San Francisco Examiner. Beginning in 2003, Rachel covered dance for the San Francisco Chronicle, serving as chief dance correspondent from 2006 to 2009. She has twice served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts’ dance division. She also served three years on the Isadora Duncan Dance Awards committee, and is proud to have played a small advisory board role in the creation of Santa Barbara DANCEworks, an annual residency program for choreographers.
Rachel’s two childhood loves were books and ballet. Yes, she did dance as a child, but no, she was not particularly talented at it. In recent years, she has been learning to sing jazz standards. Fortunately for anyone within earshot, she gets a little better every week. She is thrilled to be a member of the choir at Asheville’s Cathedral of All Souls, where she attempts to sing second soprano, even though she needs many more private voice lessons before she hits that high C.
Mailing address:
Rachel Howard
WWC-CPO 6132
PO Box 9000
Asheville, NC 28815-9000
