Betsy Howell lives in Port Townsend, WA and works for the Forest Service in Olympia as a wildlife biologist. Her essays and articles about her travel experiences and adventures as a biologist with the Peace Corps and with the Forest Service have appeared in The Apple Valley Review, Women in Natural Resources, and in the anthology The Back Road to Crazy from the University of Utah Press. Excerpts from her memoir have also appeared in the Clackamas Literary Review and the South Loop Review.
Betsy's book Acoustic Shadows is based on Betsy’s great-great-grandfather’s Civil War diaries, which he kept as a Union soldier from 1862-1865, and her father’s wartime experiences during World War II. Howell used her family’s words and silences as the basis for coming to terms with her own life and struggles. Her journey to understand the effects of war on families, took her into the world of Civil War reenacting, where she created the persona of Bertram and discovered how many women had passed as soldiers during the conflict.
She is currently working on a novel about the Civil War. |
