Marie Howe is the 2012-2014 Poet Laureate of New York State and an award-winning author of three volumes of poetry. Her most recent book, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2008) was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Other titles include What the Living Do (1997), which was praised by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the five best poetry collections of the year, and The Good Thief (1988), selected by Margaret Atwood for the 1987 National Poetry Series. Howe also co-edited (with Michael Klein) the essay anthology In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994).

Having earned her M.F.A. from Columbia University in 1983, Howe was chosen by Stanley Kunitz for the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets in 1988, with Kunitz referring to her poetry as “luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life.” She was a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and the Fine Arts Work Center, and she has also been the recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. Howe teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, and New York University.