LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.  She is the Eidson Distinguished Professor of American Literature in English at the University of Georgia.  Howe is the author of novels, plays and poetry, and her awards include: the American Book Award, Western Literature Association’s 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award; the inaugural 2014 MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures; and a 2012 United States Artists Ford Fellowship, among others. During the Arab Spring, 2010-2011, Howe was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Jordan, Amman.  Her most recent book, Savage Conversations, Coffee House Press, (2019) is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln and the Savage Indian spirit that Mary claimed tortured her nightly in 1875.  

Howe is the co-editor along with Padraig Kirwan of Famine Pots: The Choctaw Irish Gift Exchange 1847-Present, Michigan State University Press, 2020.  Her other major project was working with Executive Editor, Joy Harjo, (Howe is Executive Associate Editor) along with Managing Editor, Jennifer Foerster to bring forth the anthology When The Light of The World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: the Norton Anthology of Native American Poetry.  The anthology has regional editors from across the country, and includes160 Native poets from 100 Native Nations, covering two centuries of indigenous poetry in the United States.  Both books appeared in August 2020.