Jane Howard (journalist)
Jane Temple Howard was an American journalist, author, and educator. She worked at Life magazine from 1956 to 1972. She contributed articles to many publications and wrote several books; most well-known was her biography of Margaret Mead.
Biography
Family
Howard was born in Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois, but raised in Winnetka. Her father, Robert Pickrell Howard, was a historian, a political newsreporter and correspondent for the Chicago Tribune for nearly three decades. Her mother, Eleanor, died in 1971, when Jane was in her mid-thirties; her father remarried later, to Elizabeth Thomas. She had one sister, Ann and one brother, Henry. In her 1978 book, "Families," she wrote:Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
Education
Howard attended the University of Michigan, graduating in 1956, with her bachelor's degree. She was awarded two honorary degrees, a Doctor of Letters from Grinnell College in 1979 and a Doctor of Humane Letters, from Hamline University in 1984. As a student, she worked as a reporter and editor for the university newspaper.Career
Howard joined Time-Life as a trainee at age 21. She worked for Life magazine from 1956 until 1972 as a reporter, assistant editor, associate editor, and staff writer. Some of her work included interviews with novelists, Vladimir Nabokov, Truman Capote, Pulitzer prize-winning author John Updike, and Jacqueline Susann, author of "Valley of the Dolls.Columbia University, in a brief biography, lists her teaching career, as a '"visiting lecturer at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Georgia School of Journalism, Yale University English Department, and the State University of New York Albany English Department "' and '"was a John Steinbeck Writer-in-Residence at Southampton College, and a James Thurber Writer-in Residence at Ohio State University."' In 1989, she was a contributing editor for the monthly women's magazine, Lear's, and conducted interviews that were published in the monthly column, "A Woman for Lear's."
As a freelance writer, Howard wrote articles, published in numerous periodicals including, Smithsonian, Esquire, The Washington Post Book World, Mademoiselle, and The New York Times Book Review.
Howard taught non-fiction writing workshops at the Split Rock Arts Program at the University of Minnesota ; she also taught creative writing at Columbia University, during the 1990s.
Death
Howard died at her home in Manhattan, from pancreatic cancer. She was survived by her sister, Ann Condon.Selected works
Columbia University Libraries, maintains a collection of her works in their archives including correspondence, manuscripts, drafts, notes, journals, scrapbooks, audio tapes, datebooks and calendars, photographs, printed material, memorabilia, and files containing information about articles that she researched and wrote while on the staff of Life magazine.Articles
Close-up/Marianne Moore, 79, keeps going like sixty, Detached from : Life, vol. 62, no. 2, January 13, 1967Books
Please Touch: a guided tour of the human potential movement, McGraw-Hill, 1st ed.,1970, A Different Woman, 1st ed., Dutton, 1973, Families, Transaction Publications, 1998, ©1978, Margaret Mead: a life, Fawcet Crest, 1985,At the time of her death, Howard was writing a book under the working title Heartland.