Maureen Kearns Howard, a highly acclaimed writer who trained her sharp eye on the Irish American experience as she had lived and observed it, died on March 13, 2022 at the age of 91. In addition to her nine novels, three of which were nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, she is best-known for Facts of Life, an award-winning autobiography. There is no relation to the novel and the hit television program.
Howard was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on June 28, 1930. She credited her mother, Loretta, for exposing her to the fine arts and enrolled her in lessons for ballet, piano, and elocution. Her father, on the other hand, who was an Irish immigrant, was a detective.
While pursuing the fine arts, Howard had stay connected to her alma mater, Smith College, and soon explored the education industry. Eventually, she would move on to teach writing and literature as several institutions including Columbia University and Yale University.
Howard’s books have often been called experimental, since they rely on literary techniques such as shifting perspectives and nonlinear narration. Her concern with the Irish American experience extended to include themes about identity, family, history, and religion. Although she wanted to be seen as a writer, not a woman writer, in her fiction, she often explored how women’s lives have been determined and circumscribed by the men around them. In particular, Facts of Life, explains the conflict between her goals and her father’s hopes for her.
A Select Biography
Fiction
- Not a Word About Nightingales, Secker & Warburg, 1960
- Bridgeport Bus, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965
- Before My Time, Little, Brown & Co., 1974
- Grace Abounding, Little, Brown & Co., 1982
- Expensive Habits, Summit Books, 1986
- Natural History, W.W. Norton & Co., 1992
- A Lover’s Almanac, Viking, 1998
- The Silver Screen, Viking, 2004
- The Rags of Time, Viking, 2009
- Big as Life: Three Tales for Spring (short stories),Viking, 2001
Non-fiction
- Facts of Life, Little, Brown & Co., 1978
