Tony Howarth

Tony Howarth, editor for dramatic writing with The Westchester Review, is a playwright, director, former journalist, retired in 1991 after twenty-eight years as a high school and college teacher of English and theatre. William Wordsworth helped him survive adolescence, inspired him to write poetry of his own, but as as a college freshman he found a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused did not fit well in a climate devoted to the work of Eliot and Pope. He adjusted his...See more

Tony Howarth, editor for dramatic writing with The Westchester Review, is a playwright, director, former journalist, retired in 1991 after twenty-eight years as a high school and college teacher of English and theatre. William Wordsworth helped him survive adolescence, inspired him to write poetry of his own, but as as a college freshman he found a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused did not fit well in a climate devoted to the work of Eliot and Pope. He adjusted his ambitions to journalism, in Cleveland; Meriden, Connecticut; the US Army; Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Indianapolis; and New York City, where he was editor of the editorial page of The World- Telegram and Sun . Disillusioned after a printers' strike and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he turned to teaching, where he was asked to develop a theatre program, which in turn led to a list of professional credits, including a dozen plays and a musical presented off-Broadway; full lengths include Thornwood , which won a Drama League grant, produced at Circle Rep and the Mint Theatre in New York City, colleges across the U.S., Amsterdam, Tanzania, made into an award-winning indie film, Slings and Arrows . For many summers he directed musicals at the College Light Opera Company in Falmouth, Massachusetts. He began writing poetry again in 2009 after a visit to Wordworth's Dove Cottage (clouds and daffodils) in England's Lake District. His poetry, developed at the Hudson Valley Writing Center under the treasured guidance of Jennifer Franklin and Fred Marchant, has appeared in many magazines, among them Chronogram , The Naugatuck River Review , a magazine in England Obsessed with Pipework , The Connecticut River Review , Raven's Perch , The Sow's Ear , The Grayson Press anthology Forgotten Women . And a play published by The Westchester Review called The Wedding Ring , a moment in the life of who else but William Wordsworth. Wild Man of the Mountain , his first drama in verse, was published by Broadstone Books in 2021. See less