Jennifer Howard

Jennifer Howard

Writer, editor, journalist.

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Writing

Home Range

Spring/summer 2025 | South 85 Journal

Thanks to the editors of South 85 Journal for publishing my essay "Home Range," about a road trip to California I took with my son in the pandemic summer of 2021. Strange and memorable times. Here's an excerpt:

The summer my mother crossed out of our lives, my son and I hit the road. It was 2021, a year of absences, the pandemic eating through routines and plans. My daughter, my oldest child, had left for college and some semblance of dorm life the fall before, though her classes were mostly remote. My son, my youngest, was about to start his senior year of high school.... To let a child move out into the world, you make space for the knowledge that you can’t protect them. Disaster—megafires, insurrections—can overtake anyone, at home or a continent or world away. Planning our westward jaunt, I kept this to myself, trusting that the young tend not to think this way. If they did, they might never leave.
 Read More at South 85 Journal »

A Garden Writer’s Novel Bears Fruit

March 7, 2025 | The New York Times Book Review

"An apple got Adam and Eve thrown out of paradise. In Linda Joan Smith’s glowing debut novel, a peach shows a 13-year-old girl the way in." I escaped the news for a little while and wrote about THE PEACH THIEF, a lovely middle-grade novel set in 1850 in Lancashire, for the New York Times Book Review. Highly recommended. Read More at The New York Times Book Review »

As Humanities Fight for Support, New Journal Aims to Celebrate Their Role in Public Life

Jan. 6, 2025 | EdSurge

My latest for EdSurge: "A new peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Public Humanities, aims to strengthen the connections between university-based humanities work and the wider world, creating a space for academics and practitioners to share what they do and how they do it. And its creation is a sign of how professors and others in higher education want to make the case that, in spite of perennial laments about the crisis in the humanities, they’re very much alive, especially if you look beyond dismal stats about funding cuts, threatened departments and declining majors." Read More at EdSurge »

War and Remembrance: New Novels by Lois Lowry and Gayle Forman

July 26, 2024 | The New York Times Book Review

 Read More at The New York Times Book Review »

How ‘housewife’ became an insult

March 10, 2024 | The Washington Post

 Read More at The Washington Post »

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Recent Writing

  • Home Range
  • A Garden Writer’s Novel Bears Fruit
  • As Humanities Fight for Support, New Journal Aims to Celebrate Their Role in Public Life

Recent Posts

  • My college road trip essay
  • Secret gardens
  • Fire, ice, and Feiffer

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About Jen

Jen Howard smiling.

Writer, journalist, editor, gadabout. Book- and nature lover. Washingtonian. LLC. Read more »

Latest Posts

  • My college road trip essay
  • Secret gardens
  • Fire, ice, and Feiffer
  • Twelfth Night/J6
  • November 2024: Quiet time

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