Here are some of the reasons why Fanny Howe rules and why we will totally make a fanzine for her as soon as we re-find that ol’ longarmed stapler: 1. She has a huge, strange, and thoughtful body of work, ranging from poems (back to those in a sec) to gloriously collaged essays to novels and wicked sharp short stories. 2. She grapples with topics like interracial love and gnosticism and utopia. 3. She writes young adult novels. 4. She has three children, including novelist Danzy Senna, and six grandchildren. 5. When she was seventeen, she left her home in Boston and moved to California. 6. She won a Guggenheim. 7. She wrote this about desire: “When you still desire a thing, its time has not yet come. And when you have what you desired, you will have no more desire, instead you will have time. Weak desires protect you from disappointment. But nothing keeps you safer than being a visible ruin.” 9. She writes lyrically and passionately about history. 10. Her poems just won the 2009 Ruth Lilly Prize, which is presented by the Poetry Foundation and, at $100,000, one of the largest lit prizes in the U.S. (Past winners include David Wagoner, John Ashbery, W.S. Merwin, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Lucille Clifton.) Howe will accept the cheque at the Pegasus Awards Ceremony in Chicago on Tuesday, May 19th — this gives us just under a month to find that stapler.