Bette Howland

Bette Howland (January 28, 1937 – December 13, 2017) was an American writer and literary critic. She wrote for Commentary Magazine.

Born Bette Lee Sotonoff to Sam Sotonoff, a machinist, and Jessie Berger, a homemaker, she focused much of her work on her native Chicago, though she left the city in 1975.

In 1956, she married Howard Howland, a biologist. The couple had two sons but later separated and divorced, though she kept his surname. She worked as a librarian and did editorial work for the University of Chicago Press. She was a protegee, and sometime lover, of Saul Bellow.

Howland died on December 13, 2017, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, aged 80, while living near one of her sons, the philosopher Jacob Howland.

In 2013 editor Brigid Hughes found Howland's book W-3 and decided to include some of Howland's work in an issue of the literary journal A Public Space dedicated to obscure and forgotten women writers.

A Public Space eventually decided to publish some of Howland's stories through their imprint in 2019, under the title Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.

• 1978: Guggenheim Fellow
• 1984: MacArthur Fellows Program
• 2022: Inductee in the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

• W-3, Viking Press, 1974; ISBN 978-0-670-74863-1
• Blue in Chicago, Harper & Row, 1978; ISBN 978-0-06-011957-7
• Things to Come and Go: Three Stories, Knopf, 1983; ISBN 978-0-394-53032-1
• Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Brooklyn, NY : A Public Space Books, 2019, ISBN 978-0-9982675-0-0