​Joshua Howes has been, in various times and places, an author, filmmaker, newspaper reporter, NGO staffer, small business owner, travel agent, teacher, tutor, and political activist. He has published multiple stories in Ploughshares, as well as fiction in The Mind’s Eye and The Best Young Writers and Artists in America; been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the Nelson Algren Award, and the David Nathan Meyerson Memorial Prize; been awarded the Bocock-Guerard Fiction Prize at Stanford University; and taught fiction at Columbia University, where he earned an MFA. As a filmmaker, he is the writer/director of the forthcoming feature film Corona Boys; wrote the short Jackson Parish (2011), which won awards from BET, the Johnson & Johnson Lens on Talent Competition, the NYU First Run Film Festival, and more; and co-wrote and co-directed (with Liam Brady) the 35-minute film Rock Paper Scissors (2003).​

Outside of the arts and letters, Joshua has been a staff reporter for his hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, worked in nonprofit educational programming for students of color, co-founded a green energy storage company, advised on progressive political campaigns, and been a queer activisit. Joshua comes from a multifaith, multiethnic family with roots in several countries. He lives near Chicago with his two children. He is a practicing Buddhist.