About

Clarence Major is the author of eleven novels, sixteen collections of poetry, two volumes of short stories, and ten works of nonfiction. He has contributed to The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, the Literary Review, and dozens of other periodicals. His poetry was selected for inclusion in The Best American Poetry, 2019.

Winner of a National Book Award Bronze Medal (1999), a Fulbright-Hays Exchange Award, the Western States Book Award in 1986, National Council on the Arts Award, the Stephen Henderson Poetry Award for Outstanding Achievement, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Award in 2015 for “Lifetime Achievement in the Arts,” the PEN-Oakland Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016, and many other awards and grants, Major represented the United States at the International Poetry Festival in Yugoslavia in 1975. In 2021 he was elected to the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Before retiring in 2007 as Distinguished Professor in the English Department, University of California, Davis, he taught at Sarah Lawrence College, University of Washington, Howard University, Temple University, University of California at San Diego, and at dozens of other universities, including the University of Nice, 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 Given Collection at the Anderson Library, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Clarence Major lives in northern California.