Rebecca Gayle Howell, associate professor at the University of Arkansas, has received the 2025 Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry from the literary magazine The Sewanee Review. Presented annually, the award honors a distinguished poet in the maturity of their career.
A University of Arkansas faculty member since 2022, Dr. Howell currently teaches in the university’s master of fine arts degree program in creative writing and translation. She also serves on the faculty of the University of the South’s Sewanee School of Letters. From 2014 to 2024, Dr. Howell was poetry editor for the Oxford American.
Outside of academia, Professor Howell is a writer, translator, librettist, and editor. Her published works include Render / An Apocalypse (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2013) and American Purgatory (Eyewear Publishing, 2017), both of which are climate change novels-in-verse. Professor Howell’s next book, Erase Genesis, is set for publication in spring 2026 by Bridwell Press.
Dr. Howell holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Kentucky. She earned a master of fine arts degree from Drew University in New Jersey and a Ph.D. in English from Texas Tech University.