Novels
Rope & Bone
Night Navigation
Doing Time Outside
Poetry
An Opera of Hankering
Nonfiction
I’m Sick of This Already
The poetry collection…
An Opera of Hankering
An Opera of Hankering by Ginnah Howard is a lifetime collection of one woman’s most personal moments, written in the moment: The moment of longing, of lust, of love; of terrible loss, tender remembrance, deep regret. It is one woman’s whole truth, growing wiser and deeper with age.
One Transcendent Voice
“These poems are boundlessly honest and revealing. I am astounded by the contrasts in mood and diction. From meditative to rebellious, deeply serious to hilarious, these poems show us the poet’s life in starkly different voices that come together, when read as a whole, in one essential, transcendent voice.”
—David Bachner, author of Just Then, Just There
An Evocative Collection
“Ginnah Howard’s An Opera of Hankering is one of the most evocative collections of poems I’ve ever read. I am astounded by her creative use of simile and metaphor in such subtle ways to produce images and elicit emotions in these heartfelt, poignant poems. Hooray and three cheers for Ginnah and this fine keepsake collection.”
—Harry Barnes, author of the series Over the Barnes Bridge
A Life Shared, Unvarnished
“Ginnah Howard read many of the poems in this collection in our fireside salons at Women At Woodstock. As I read her words now, I hear her voice; its slight southern lilt, its warmth and wry humor; a kindred spirit walking alongside me as she shares her life, unvarnished. An Opera of Hankering lays bare the truth of all women’s lives.”
—Ann Voorhees Baker, founder, Women At Woodstock Writers
The Peepers (foreword)
Only a few nights ago the peepers woke—
a more discordant opera of hankering you’ve never heard:
such a din of longing, each me, me, me tuning up. Imagine the transcription.
What librettist ever got Babel better: the gospel of love.
About
Ginnah Howard
Ginnah Howard’s work has appeared in Waterstone Review, Permafrost, Portland Review, Descant 145, The Tusculum Review, and elsewhere. Several stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Night Navigation, book 2 of her upstate novel trilogy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009) was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Book 1 of the trilogy (Rope & Bone: A Novel in Stories, (Illume Writers & Artists, 2014) was listed by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the “best of the best” Indie books of 2015.
Did you draw on your own experiences in the writing of Night Navigation?
Though Night Navigation is a work of fiction, with its characters and much of its development based on research and invention, the core of the story springs from real events in my own family’s life: suicide, and all of this complicated by the co-occurrence of mental illness and substance abuse. Like Del Merrick, the mother in Night Navigation, I have received many calls in the night, driven many miles on snowy roads to support meetings: Al-Anon, where I’ve been encouraged to “let go” and to National Alliance on Mental Illness groups, where I’ve been advised to “hang on.”
Are there any other factors in your life that have influenced your writing?
I grew up under the care of a strong mother, also a lover of books, a person who always encouraged me. The kind of woman who was able to run the night infirmary on the 17th floor in one of Pratt’s dormitories after undergoing some failed knee surgery, dressed in a bright caftan which covered a body cast that ran from below her breast down her left leg to her toes. A woman who when I became pregnant encouraged me not to drop out of graduate school with the advice that I might have to work one day. A one day that began almost immediately and lasted for twenty-seven years of teaching high school English, a job I graduated from in 1995 which left me more time to sit down to put words on the page.
Novels, Nonfiction & Poetry
Three acclaimed novels, each distinct, all connected; a trilogy of pain, of love, of redemption; a personal study of a teacher and her students, challenged and challenging; and a raw, lyrical, searingly honest collection of poetry that in all its variety and moodiness evokes the essence of womanhood.
Illume Publications
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Standing Stone Books
Illume Publications
Reviews
Reviews of Ginnah Howard’s Work
“These three women could be a novel in themselves, with their mingled strands of love and resentment birthed over decades of caring and mistakes and half-told histories. Through Rudy’s crisis, they are slammed together like billiard balls breaking and forced to dive deeper into each other’s assumptions and realities.
Rudy, his mistakes and lesser moments notwithstanding, has a desire to do right as he picks his way through a minefield. … You start really, really wanting Rudy to make it, a topic around which Howard builds mind-bending suspense.
It all comes together in a knockout ending—Howard’s characters have grown and so have we. A beautiful read.”
— Anne Pyburn Craig
Chronogram, 01/01/2015
“Night Navigation. . . is so smooth a telling of a rough ride that you’d think it was the author’s fourth, fifth or sixth book, not her first. . . even greater is the fact that she was able to take us with her. Ginnah Howard is a writer to watch.”
— The Washington Times Book Review
May 5, 2009
“As Night Navigation undulates between Del’s point of view and Mark’s, Howard lets their tense interactions and inability to communicate propel the novel, never attempting to rationalize their problems or forcing them to succumb to psychoanalytic clichés.”
— New York Times Book Review
An Editor’s Choice, July 5, 2009
“Doing Time Outside refers to the painful and difficult period of time spent by a family member or friend of a person incarcerated in a correctional facility. .. Ms. Howard carves a slice of time out of the Morletti family’s world. Each individual—mother, son, and daughter—is in some way damaged; each individual is in some way brimming with resilience…(The author) writes as if she’s creating a mosaic—laying down each piece of stone as snippets from life—each snippet being told from a different point of view until an image of a family is slowly created. The final image isn’t always pretty, but it’s intriguing and charming, and formed with humor and love. .. Doing Time Outside is an emotional and engaging slice of life. It’s well worth doing time with this family. ”
— Karen Winter Schwartz
New York Journal of Books
September 16, 2013
“Wow. This is a terrific book by a woman who really knows at-risk high school students who are living “on the edge”. And she knows how to write. The style is fresh, without jargon; you can’t help turning pages.
I found the book engrossing, with sharply drawn portraits of students who stayed on my mind. She does a marvelous job of creating the world of school, the rhythms of the classroom, the body language of students … Howard knows her kids. She looks at them with deep, thoughtful, loving eyes. Readers will sense this from the first page.”
— Ralph Fletcher
Author of Walking Trees: Portraits of Teachers and Children in the Cultures of Schools
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