Born in Portland, Oregon, Christopher Howell attended Pacific Lutheran and Oregon State universities, and holds graduate degrees from Portland State University and the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of thirteen collections of poems, including newly released Book of Beginnings and Ends, and The Grief of a Happy Life, Love’s Last Number, Gaze, and Dreamless and Possible: Poems New and Selected (University of Washington Press, 2010). He has received the Washington State Governor’s Award, the Washington State Book Award, two National Endowment Fellowships, two fellowships from the Artist Trust, the Vachel Lindsey and Helen Bullis Prizes, and a number of other fellowships and awards. His work has made three appearances in the annual Pushcart Prize collection, and may be found in many journals and anthologies. A military journalist during the Vietnam War, since 1975 he has been director and principle editor for Lynx House Press and was formerly director of Eastern Washington University Press and Willow Springs Books. He is one of the founders, along with Christine Holbert and Scott Poole, of the Get Lit Festival, and he has been a member of Eastern Washington University’s Master of Fine Arts faculty since 1996.