University of Windsor alumna Marie Howe has been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection New and Selected Poems. (Courtesy Marie Howe)
By Lindsay Charlton
Acclaimed poet Marie Howe (BA 1974) was stunned to learn she had been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection New and Selected Poems.
“It was absolutely stunning and surprising that this happened,” she recalled. “I heard about the news from a friend who called me and said, ‘You won the Pulitzer.’ I didn’t believe it. For about three or four minutes, we went back and forth, and I told him, ‘Stop, that’s not even funny, don’t even say that.’”
But it was true. Her editor’s email delivering the news of the prestigious award had landed in her spam folder.
“It was marvellous,” Howe said. “After it sunk in, which took a while, it was great. I was very encouraged and grateful for the affirmation.”
The Pulitzer Prize committee recognized Howe’s book as “a collection drawn from decades of work that mines the day-to-day modern experience for evidence of our shared loneliness, mortality, and holiness.”
New and Selected Poems was named one of NPR’s Books We Love and a California Review of Books Best Poetry selection in 2024. New York Magazine characterized Howe’s work as having “a radical simplicity and seriousness of purpose, along with a fearless interest in autobiography and its tragedies and redemptions.”
In her own words, Howe described the work as “a book anyone can read. I want people to know I wrote it to them. It’s not dense or complicated, but it holds and celebrates the joys and sorrows of being alive. It’s important to me that people who don’t usually read poetry give it a try.”
This volume draws from more than three decades of work, representing each of Howe’s previous collections, including The Good Thief (1988), What the Living Do (1999), The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (2009), and Magdalene (2017), along with 20 new poems.
“We’re told that poetry is hard to understand, a secret we could figure out, but it’s none of that. My poetry tries to hold the mysterious situation we find ourselves in while being alive and knowing we’re going to die,” Howe said, again encouraging readers to explore poetry.
“It’s an extraordinary and transformative art.”
Howe said she first started her poetic exploration while an undergraduate studying English at the University of Windsor, fondly remembering her time there.
Calling Windsor an important place in her life, the New York native recalled the friends she made, many of whom became artists, poets, writers and educators, along with professors who encouraged her to pursue writing.
Reflecting on a class taught by famed author Joyce Carroll Oates, Howe said, “We’d meet for about three hours and would talk about a novel a week. It was the first room I ever walked into where people talked about books in a way that made sense to me, in wondering.”
Following her time at the University of Windsor, she returned to Rochester, N.Y., and worked briefly as a newspaper reporter before becoming a teacher and later pursuing her BFA at Columbia University.
“I struggled, as many young people do, trying to find direction,” Howe shared. “Then one day I asked myself what I loved most. The answer was people and literature — stories that enlarge our understanding of ourselves and the wide world.”
“Teaching gave me a way of interacting with other people on a deep level. It gave me books that opened the world with language that was intentional and beautiful. And it gave me freedom to roam and to write and explore during the summer months.”
Howe has held teaching positions at Columbia University, New York University, and now Sarah Lawrence College, all while continuing to write poetry. She served as New York State’s poet laureate from 2012 to 2016 and was later elected chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2018, in addition to serving as poet-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Along with her Pulitzer, Howe has earned numerous awards for her work, including the 2015 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, as well as grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Bunting Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
This profile is part of a special series celebrating Alumni Week 2025. Discover events and more at uwindsor.ca/alumniweek.
