| Maureen Howard | |
|---|---|
| Born | Maureen Kearns June 28, 1930 Bridgeport, Connecticut |
| Language | English |
| Alma mater | Smith College |
| Genres | Fiction, memoir |
| Notable work(s) | Facts of Life |
| Notable award(s) | National Book Critics Circle Award |
| Spouse(s) | Daniel F. Howard (1954-1967) David J. Gordon (1968-?) Mark Probst (1981-present) |
Maureen Howard (born June 28, 1930) is an American writer, editor, and lecturer known for her award-winning autobiography Facts of Life.
She was born Maureen Kearns in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Her father William L. Kearns worked for the State's Attorney's Office as a detective where he was assigned to the Harold Israel case.[1] Howard attended Smith College, graduating with a B.A. in 1952. After graduation she worked in advertising for several years and married Professor Daniel F. Howard in 1954. In 1960, Howard published her first novel Not a Word about Nightingales which tells the story of a New England girl who is sent to Perugia, Italy to retrieve her father who is on an extended sabbatical. The book was a bestseller and she followed it with several other novels set in New England with Irish-American protagonists.[2] She divorced Daniel Howard in 1967 and married David J. Gordon the following year. In 1967 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. The same year she was named a Radcliffe Institute Fellow. During the late 1960s and 1970s she taught literature, drama and creative writing at The New School and UCSB and lectured at CUNY and Columbia University.[3] In 1978 she published her autobiography Facts of Life which won a National Book Critics Circle Award. She continued writing novels and taught English at Amherst College. In 1981 she married author and stockbroker Mark Probst.[4] She was named a fellow by the Ingram Merrill Foundation in 1988. In 1993, she was awarded the Literary Lion Award by the New York Public Library.[5]
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