Joan E. Howard

Photograph Corinne Nowotnik Joan E. Howard was born and grew up in Augusta, Maine. She studied psychology and French at the University of New Hampshire, then earned her M.A. and Ph.D. at the Universities of Rhode Island and Connecticut, respectively. While teaching at her undergraduate alma mater in the 1980s, she met and spent several summers with the subject of her doctoral dissertation, Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987). Howard is the English translator of two biographies by the French journalist and writer Josyane Savigneau: "Marguerite Yourcenar: Inventing a Life" and "Carson McCullers: A Life." Since 2000, she has served as director of the Marguerite Yourcenar house museum, Petite Plaisance, in Northeast Harbor, Maine. Her recent book, "We Met in Paris: Grace Frick and Her Life with Marguerite Yourcenar" was long-listed for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography in 2019. Joan is working on a memoir of her time with Madame Yourcenar.