Howard Fast was born in New York City, February 21, 1908. His father was a lawyer and his mother a concert pianist. He grew up in Manhattan, in the East Side ghetto where he attended P.S. 63 and then graduated from Hunter College High School in 1926
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He published his first story when he was 16 years old. The manuscript "A Nice Place to Visit" appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. The same year he graduated from high school, Fast married Jeanette Guttman, an elementary school teacher four years his senior.
They had no children who survived infancy. After college Fast worked as a reporter for various newspapers and as a copy editor for magazines including Collier's, Esquire, Liberty Magazine, The American Weekly, The Book of the Month Club, The Magazine of Poetry, Poetry Quarterly and Poetry Review. Fast was an active member of the Communist Party USA during World War II and served on the Central Committee of the Communist Party USA from 1946 to 1950.
During this time he was also the editor of The New Masses magazine which published many of his works. In 1953 Fast became the first American to be awarded the Stalin Peace Prize for his writings on Russia during World War II.