Clarence Major

Clarence Major is a prize-winning novelist, poet and painter who has also written several novels and works of nonfiction. He was born in Atlanta and grew up in Chicago where, on a scholarship, he attended Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute. He taught at various universities and retired from teaching modern and contemporary literature and creative writing at the University of California Davis in 2007. His paintings have been part of twenty-eight group shows and fifteen solo shows. He is the author of fifteen collections of poetry; and eleven works of fiction. A recent retrospective of poetry is From Now On: New and Selected Poems 1970-2015, University of Georgia Press, 2015. Clarence Major is the winner of the "2015 Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Fine Arts," presented by The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, September 16, 2015, in Washington D. C. Major was also award the PEN/ Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Literature on December 3, 2016.