Born: 1932
Ohio connection: Former Resident
Bowling Green
Howard McCord, son of Frank Edward and Sylvia Joe (Coe) McCord, was born in 1932 in El Paso, Texas. He married Dora Garcia Ochoa in 1953. The couple had two children, Colman and Robert. The marriage later ended in divorce, and McCord married Jennifer Sue Revis in 1975. They had four children: Susannah, Julia, Wyatt, and Eva. Howard McCord received a B.A. from Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso) in 1957, and an M.A. from the University of Utah in 1958. He taught at Washington State University from 1960 until 1971; and from 1971 until 2000 at Bowling Green State University, where he served as professor of English until his retirement. McCord has written many books including: The Fire Visions; Maps: Poems Toward an Iconography of the West; The Diary of a Lost Girl; The Arctic Desert; The Great Toad Hunt and Other Expeditions; The Man Who Walked to the Moon; Precise Fragment; Twelve Bones; The Spanish Dark and Other Poems; Fables and Transfigurations; Lojaunes, His Periplus; Selected Poems: 1955-1971 and The Duke of Chemical Birds. His works include novels, essays and poetry.
Awards:
National Woodrow Wilson fellowship, 1957-58; Fulbright award, 1965; E. O. Holland fellow, 1967; Helen Wurlitzer Foundation Award, 1968; Washington State Governor’s Award, 1968, 1970; Borestone Mountain Poetry award, 1969; Hart Crane Memorial Award, 1970; D. H. Lawrence fellow, University of New Mexico, 1971; Distinguished Achievement Award, Bowling Green State University, 1975; National Endowment for the Arts fellow, 1976, 1983; Ohio Arts Council fellow, 1982; Ohioana Award for Poetry, 1990; Golden Nugget Award, University of Texas at El Paso, 1990.