Howard Frank Mosher was an American writer, well-known for his literary fiction set in the North East. He was born in Kingston, New York, to Helen Emily Trapp and Howard H. Mosher. Mosher had a nomadic childhood, moving more than ten times with his family before he began high school. This constant moving took place due to his father's wanderlust, who was a schoolteacher. Despite the disruption, this moving around had a positive impact on Mosher's life, as it led him to meet his future wife, Phillis Claycomb, in Cato, New York.
Mosher and Phillis Claycomb met in school when he was a young adolescent. He was captivated by her beauty, and they soon became inseparable, sitting beside each other in classes. Mosher's early attempts at writing sarcastic stories about the teachers were meant to entertain Phillis. After high school, both went to Syracuse University, where Mosher graduated with a bachelor's degree in English, and Phillis with a bachelor's degree in science education. They were married soon after graduation and got jobs in Orleans. Mosher furthered his education at the University of Vermont for his master's degree before moving west for a graduate program at the University of California Irvine, which he despised. He returned to Northern Vermont and the mountains he loved so much, spending most of the following decade cutting pulpwood with Jake Blodgett, a former whiskey smuggler and trout angler.
Howard Frank Mosher was a prolific American author who published 12 novels, two memoirs, and countless essays and book reviews. Over his successful career, he received numerous awards and accolades for his work. In 1979, Mosher was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. His novel, A Stranger In the Kingdom, won the New England Book Award for Fiction in 1991 and was later adapted into a film by director Jay Craven. In 2006, Mosher received the Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, and in 2011, he was awarded the New England Independent Booksellers Association's President's Award for Lifetime Achievement. His final work of fiction, Points North, was published by St. Martin's Press in the winter of 2018.