Helen Houghton

Helen Handley Houghton was an English teacher in both public and private schools at the upper school level for twenty years. She worked as Poetry Assistant to the Poet Laureate at the Library of Congress and has been managing editor of The Hudson Review and contributing editor of The Pushcart Prize. An anthologist, she coedited The Music Lover’s Poetry Anthology (Persea Books), The Lover’s Quotation Book, A Literary Companion (Pushcart Press), and Child, A Literary Companion (Pushcart Press). In addition to the Academy of American Poets, where she served on the Executive Committee, as Secretary, and is a member of its Emeritus Circle, she is a Board member of the Hudson Review and a former Board member of Poets & Writers, Poets House, and the Licia Albanese-Puccini Foundation. Several years ago, she helped establish the annual poetry reading series in her mother’s name at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Ms. Houghton is a member of the Century Association as well as P.E.N. and the Colony Club, where she served on the Board of Governors and was chairman of the Library Committee and the Literature & Arts Committee. Ms. Houghton earned a BA in English and French from the University of Utah and MA in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and continued her postgraduate studies in poetry at Stanford University, New York University, and Oxford University. A trained classical pianist, an avid photographer and equestrienne, she and her husband, Frank Houghton, live in North Salem, New York.