Ravi Howard

{{short description|American novelist}}

Ravi Howard is an American novelist.{{cite web|last=Jones|first=Tayari|title=Ravi Howard on singer Nat King Cole: "The Jackie Robinson of television"|date=January 27, 2015|website=Salon.com|url=https://www.salon.com/2015/01/27/ravi_howard_on_singer_nat_king_cole_the_jackie_robinson_of_television/|accessdate=March 4, 2025}} His first novel Like Trees, Walking was published in 2007 and inspired by the lynching of Michael Donald.{{cite web|title=Novelist Ravi Howard on 'Like Trees, Walking'|date=March 7, 2007|website=NPR|url=https://www.npr.org/2007/03/07/7754928/novelist-ravi-howard-on-like-trees-walking|accessdate=March 4, 2025}} His second novel, Driving the King, was published in 2014 and is about the friendship between Nat King Cole and his friend Nat Weary.{{cite newspaper|last=Maslin|first=Janet|title=On the Civil Rights Map, a Crooner and His Driver|date=December 28, 2014|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/arts/in-driving-the-king-ravi-howard-imagines-nat-king-cole.html|accessdate=March 4, 2025}} For his work in the former novel, Howard won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.{{cite magazine|last=Gautier|first=Amina|title=The Sunday Rumpus Interview: Ravi Howard|date=February 7, 2016|magazine=The Rumpus|url=https://therumpus.net/2016/02/07/the-sunday-rumpus-interview-ravi-howard/|accessdate=March 4, 2025}}

He has also won a Sports Emmy Award for writing for the show Inside the NFL.{{cite newspaper|last=Sieradzki|first=Amanda|title=Author and teacher Ravi Howard chimes in with Poets for Change|date=September 19, 2020|newspaper=Tallahassee Democrat|url=https://www.tallahassee.com/story/life/2020/09/19/author-and-teacher-ravi-howard-chimes-poets-change/3488828001/|accessdate=March 4, 2025}} As of 2020, Howard works as a professor in the English Department at Florida State University.