Writer Takes on Gender Issues

WHILE DOUBLE MAJORING IN ENGLISH AND CREATIVE WRITING as an Oberlin student, Noelle Howey '94 was a mainstay of the Peer Tutoring program of the Expository Writing Department, which still requires two of her essays as reading for its tutor training course. Upon graduating, Howey enrolled in the PhD program in English literature at Berkeley, and after two years committed herself to a full-time career in journalism.

Noelle has devoted much attention to issues of gender and sexuality, writing on "images of womanhood" and discrimination faced by young women in religiously orthodox communities. She also writes about pressing social dilemmas like teen gambling and the phenomenon of school cheating.

An editor as well as a writer, once she found herself in a heated, yet memorable, dispute with the editors of Seventeen magazine over whether or not Alicia Silverstone was too robust to be featured as a cover-girl (Howey argued that she wasn't).

Before moving to New York, Howey worked at NPR in Cleveland before joining the staff of Seventeen, moving subsequently to Teen People and Talk. She's written personal features for Ms., New York, Brooklyn Bridge, Glamour, Mademoiselle, New Woman, and Marie Claire. Noelle is co-editor, along with Ellen Samuels '94, of an anthology entitled Out of the Ordinary: Essays about Growing Up with Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Parents coming this summer from St. Martin's Press. Recently, she signed a second book contract with St. Martin's, this time for a memoir of reflections on gender and sexuality and the experience of being raised by a transgender father.