About

Clarence Major was born in Atlanta and grew up in Chicago where, while still in high school, on a scholarship, he studied painting and drawing and art history in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute. He left the Midwest in 1966 and moved to New York. There he worked as a research analyst for Simulmatics, doing field work in Milwaukee and Detroit, and studying bias in newspaper coverage of the riots.

Major is the author of thirteen novels, seventeen collections of poetry, three volumes of short stories, and ten works of nonfiction. His novels include Dirty Bird Blues (a Penguin Classic), Such Was the Season, (a Literary Guild selection), My Amputations, winner of the Western States Book Award, Painted Turtle: Woman with Guitar, (a New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year), The Glint of Light, One Flesh, Thunderclouds in the Forecast and The Lurking Place. He has contributed to The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times, American Scholar, and dozens of other periodicals. His poetry was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry, 2019 and 2024. Winner of a National Book Award Bronze Medal (1999), a Fulbright-Hays Exchange Award (1981), the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Award in 2015 for “Lifetime Achievement for Excellence in the Fine Arts,” the PEN-Oakland Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Literature (2016), and many other awards and grants. In 2021 he was elected to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, and in 2022 he was selected writer of the year by the Georgia Writers Association.

Before retiring in 2007 as Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the English Department, University of California, Davis, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Queens College (CUNY), University of Washington, Howard University, Temple University, University of California at San Diego, and at dozens of other universities, including the University of Nice, in France. Major travelled extensively in Europe and Africa and lived for extended periods in France and Italy. His papers (manuscripts and correspondence) are in the Givens Collection at the Anderson Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Clarence Major lives in northern California.