Rae Howells

Rae Howells is a Welsh writer. Her debut poetry collection The language of bees was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award in 2023.

Career
In 2017, Howells' poem 'Airlings' won the Welsh Poetry Competition. This win was followed by another prize the next year, when 'The Winter-King' took first place in The Rialto's Nature Poetry Competition. Both of these poems would eventually appear in Howells' first full collection The language of bees, published by Parthian Books in April 2022. In May 2023, The language of bees was shortlisted for the Wales Book of the Year award, with the shortlisting announced on BBC Radio Wales.

Howells also regularly works in collaboration with other writers and artists. Prior to her first full collection, she published Bloom & Bones: a collaborative poetry pamphlet with fellow Swansea poet Jean James. Presented as a 'poetry conversation through colour' and inspired by The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair, the pamphlet contained twenty poems responding to ten colours: white, yellow, orange, pink, red, purple, blue, green, brown and black. The pamphlet was published by Hedgehog Press, and launched at The Swansea Fringe festival on 24 October 2021. Later that year, Howells was selected as one of five Welsh women artists to take part in Ù Ơ: a virtual artistic residency linking artists from Wales and Vietnam.

Poetry

 * Bloom & Bones (with Jean James) (2021)
 * The language of bees (2022)