Welcome to ANTHOLOGY! Established in the waning days of 2016, this WordPress blog is where you can find the latest updates and observations from Valerie Howland, as well as her collected works, which include published freelance articles, and The Lantern editorial columns from her days as an undergraduate student at The Ohio State University.
Valerie Howland, a native of northeast Ohio, holds three degrees: B.A. with a double major in Humanities (English) and Psychology from The Ohio State University (2001), M.Ed. from John Carroll University (2010), and MLIS from Kent State University (2016). She is currently working on advancing her prospects as an independent author and political commentator by establishing this blog for promotional and archival purposes. Expect to find observational blog posts and articles posted by her here in the future that address current topics of interest, here and abroad, and provide information about her work as an author.
As an undergraduate student, her passion for the literary arts was fanned by a number of figures, genres, and periods. Favorite (influencing) poets include Walt Whitman, John Keats, Emily Dickenson, W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Arthur Rimbaud. Favorite authors are John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. Inspired by the discovery of one Hunter S. Thompson, after watching the Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas film, starring Johnny Depp, Howland began to experiment as a writer. Her first earnest attempts at finding her own voice as a writer were undertaken as an undergraduate student in Columbus, Ohio. Here, she wrote opinion pieces that were featured on The Ohio State University’s The Lantern editorial page and was responsible for writing articles about the school’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists meetings for its web page. She also began to work as a stringer reporter for a group of weekly newspapers published in Franklin County, Ohio. During her senior year as an undergraduate student, she attended the Society of Professional Journalists national convention, hosted in Columbus, where she met Helen Thomas, a well-known and pioneering member of the Washington, D.C. Press Corps. With dashed hopes of landing an internship at the Bureau of National Affairs under her wings, Howland began her first novel, None the Wiser, followed by another, All Things Considered. The latter would be published in March of 2007 by PublishAmerica, just months shy of Howland’s 30th birthday. None the Wiser remains unpublished. Plans for future work are ongoing.
Howland’s published works as an editorial writer and freelance journalist, when available for digital archiving purposes, can be found on the ESSAYS AND POLITICS page, along with her more current pieces. A selection of her poetry can be found on the POETRY page, and excerpts, with more information about her novels, can be found on the NOVEL page.
Follow Valerie Howland on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VHowland725
CONTACT Valerie Howland directly via the CONTACT page with questions or comments!
ANTHOLOGY 