Rebecca Gayle Howell's Best Book of the Year honors include those from The Best Translated Book Awards, Foreword INDIES Awards, The Nautilus Awards, The Banipal Prize (U.K.), Ms. Magazine, The Millions, The Rumpus, and Poets & Writers. Among her other honors are the United States Artists Fellowship, the Carson McCullers Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Howell also collaborates with composer Reena Esmail to produce works for classical performance, including A Winter Breviary (Oxford University Press, 2022), an interfaith carol cycle regularly performed throughout the world.
Howell is an Associate Professor of Poetry & Translation for the University of Arkansas MFA program. From 2014 - 2024, she was the Poetry Editor of the Oxford American, the second in the magazine's history.