Poetry Alum Marie Howe ’83 Wins Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

Columbia University School of the Arts alum Marie Howe ’83 has been awarded the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection New and Selected Poems (W.W. Norton & Company). The Pulitzer Prize committee honored the work 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."

Published in April 2024, New and Selected Poems draws from four decades of Howe's acclaimed work, incorporating selections from her previous books and featuring several new poems. The collection includes work from What the Living Do (W.W. Norton, 1997), a powerful elegy for her brother who died of AIDS in 1989, and Magdalene (W.W. Norton, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award.

The collection has received widespread critical acclaim. NPR praised Howe for "writing some of the most devastating and devastatingly true poems of her career," while Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it "a necessary compilation for times of crisis." 

Characterized by what The New York Times Magazine called "a radical simplicity and seriousness of purpose," Howe's poetry transforms everyday observations into profound meditations on the human condition. Her work finds the sacred in ordinary experience, exploring themes of mortality, spirituality, and human connection through accessible yet profound language.

The 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, which carries a $15,000 award, had Jennifer Chang with An Authentic Life (Copper Canyon Press, 2024) and Danez Smith with Bluff (Graywolf Press, 2024) as finalists.

Howe's literary journey began at Columbia University School of the Arts, where she earned her MFA in 1983, studying with renowned poet Stanley Kunitz. Following graduation, her debut collection, The Good Thief (Persea, 1988), was selected by Margaret Atwood for the Open Competition of the National Poetry Series in 1987.

Throughout her distinguished career, Howe has maintained strong connections to academia, teaching at Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, and New York University. From 2012 to 2016, she served as the Poet Laureate of New York State, and in 2018, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Her work has earned numerous prestigious awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets.