Archives West Finding Aid

Joseph Kinsey Howard was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa, on February 28, 1906. He went with his mother to Great Falls, Montana, in 1919. After completing high school, he joined the staff of the Great Falls Leader in 1923 as a reporter. Three years later he was named news editor and continued in this job until 1944, when he resigned to become research associate for the Montana Study, a project of the Rockefeller Foundation and Montana State University in Missoula. He left this project after two years to devote full time to writing. Howard was the author of Montana: High, Wide and Handsome, a history of Montana which won wide critical acclaim and went into eight editions in its first three years. He also edited Montana Margins: A State Anthology . At the time of his death he was completing Strange Empire , a history of the Metis of the northwestern United States and Canada from 1860 to 1890. Howard wrote numerous magazine articles, most of them concerning Montana. He delivered lectures for writers throughout the East and the Midwest, and was twice recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships on creative writing. He reviewed books for the New York Times, and was editorial correspondent for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, as well as Montana news correspondent for Time and Life magazines. He was a staff member of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference held annually in Vermont and directed the annual writers' conference at the Regional Arts Roundup at Montana State University from 1948 to 1950. Joseph Kinsey Howard died August 25, 1951.