Bette Howland (January 28, 1937 – December 13, 2017) was an American writer and literary critic.^[1] She wrote for Commentary Magazine.^[2]

Born Bette Lee Sotonoff to Sam Sotonoff, a machinist, and Jessie Berger, a homemaker, she focused much of her work on her native Chicago, though she left the city in 1975.^[3]

In 1956, she married Howard Howland, a biologist. The couple had two sons but later separated and divorced, though she kept his surname.^[1] She worked as a librarian and did editorial work for the University of Chicago Press. She was a protegee, and sometime lover of Saul Bellow.^[4] S

Howland died on December 13, 2017, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, aged 80, while living near one of her sons, the philosopher Jacob Howland.^[1]

In 2013 editor Brigid Hughes found Howland's book W-3 and decided to include some of Howland's work in an issue of the literary journal A Public Space dedicated to obscure and forgotten women writers.^[5]

A Public Space eventually decided to publish some of Howland's stories through their imprint in 2019, under the title Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage.^[6][7]

• 1978: Guggenheim Fellow^[8]
• 1984: MacArthur Fellows Program^[9]
• 2022: Inductee in the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.^[10]

• The iron year, University of Iowa, 1967
• W-3, Viking Press, 1974; ISBN 978-0-670-74863-1
• Blue in Chicago, Harper & Row, 1978; ISBN 978-0-06-011957-7
• Things to Come and Go: Three Stories, Knopf, 1983; ISBN 978-0-394-53032-1^[11]
• Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Brooklyn, NY : A Public Space Books, 2019, ISBN 978-0-9982675-0-0