Kerry Howley is an essayist, screenwriter, and the author of Bottom’s Up and the Devil Laughs, a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Award. In the Times, critic Jennifer Szalai called Bottom’s Up “riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.” Howley’s first book, Thrown, was a pick for best-of-the-year lists in Time, Salon, Slate, and many other venues, translated into five languages, and named among the top 100 books of the year in the New York Times.

Howley is the screenwriter behind WINNER, a film directed by Susanna Fogel starring Emilia Jones, Connie Britton, and Zach Galifianakus. The coming of age comedy debuted at Sundance in 2024. In 2020 Howley left a professorship at the University of Iowa’s celebrated Nonfiction MFA program to join the staff of New York Magazine, where she has published essays about Erewhon, Jorie Graham, and January 6th. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, Best American Sportswriting, The New York Times Magazine, Granta, and Harper’s. A 2025 Guggenheim Foundation fellow, Lannan Foundation Fellow and three-time National Magazine Award nominee, she divides her time between Iowa City and Los Angeles.