International reviewers included The Wall Street Journal's Mint and Asymptote. This translation, carried out in collaboration with Husam Qaisi and al-Jubouri, was a finalist for the 2012 Best Translated Book Award and the U.K.'s Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. Howell is the English-language translator of Amal al-Jubouri's verse memoir of the Iraq War, Hagar Before the Occupation / Hagar After the Occupation (Alice James Books, 2011).

What Things Cost is called by the publisher, 'the first major anthology of labor writing in nearly a century,' and all proceeds go to benefit The Poor People's Campaign. Magazine, and a best Southern book of 2023 by Southern Review of Books. The collection has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, a notable anthology for 2023 by Poetry & Writers, a best poetry book of 2023 by Ms. Jones and associate editor Emily Jalloul (University Press of Kentucky).

In March 2023, Howell released What Things Cost: an anthology for the people, which she co-edited Ashley M. Other reviewers included ArtsATL, Nashville Review, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and The Rumpus. The book was named a must read by The Courier-Journal,The Millions and Poetry London.

American Purgatory was also a finalist for Foreword Review's INDIES Book of the Year. Īmerican Purgatory, her second book, was selected by Don Share for The Sexton Prize and was published in both Great Britain and the United States in 2017. In 2020 literary critic Jennifer Ashton featured Render / An Apocalypse in her chapter 'Ecology, Ethics, and the Apocalyptic Lyric in Recent American Poetry' for Apocalypse in American Literature and Culture (Cambridge University Press). In 2016, Burnaway: Art of the South named it a Best Book of the Year. Render / An Apocalypse also received a cover review in The Los Angeles Times, The Nautilus Award, and a finalist shortlist for Foreword Review's INDIES Book of the Year. Her first book Render / An Apocalypse was selected by Nick Flynn for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center's First Book Prize (2013). Other mentors include Carolyn Forché, Nikky Finney, Gerald Stern, Wendell Berry, W.S. Howell also apprenticed under the Southern experimental art photographer and writer James Baker Hall, as well as the leading Jewish feminist poet, Alicia Ostriker. She earned her BA and her MA at the University of Kentucky, her MFA at Drew University, and her PhD at Texas Tech University, where she studied under Curtis Bauer.

Howell was born to a working-class family in Lexington, Kentucky on August 10, 1975. In 2019 she was named a United States Artists Fellow. Rebecca Gayle Howell (born August 10, 1975, in Lexington, Kentucky) is an American writer, literary translator, and editor.

Kill Class by Nomi Stone