Clarence Major

Clarence Major
Major in 2017
Born	(1936-12-31) December 31, 1936 Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.
Occupations	Poet, painter, and novelist
Spouse	Pamela Ritter Major ​ (m. 1980)​
Children	6
Awards	PEN Oakland/Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award, 2016
Website	clarencemajor.com

Clarence Major (born December 31, 1936) is an American poet, painter, and novelist; and winner of the 2015 "Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts", presented by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. He was awarded the 2016 PEN Oakland/Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award.

Biography

Clarence Major was born on December 31, 1936, in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up in Chicago.

Major is distinguished professor emeritus of 20th-Century American Literature at the University of California, Davis. His literary archives are in the Givens Collection of African American Literature, Anderson Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Minnesota.

Teaching

Major has taught literature and/or creative writing at Brooklyn College, New York University, Queens College, Sarah Lawrence College, University of Washington, Howard University, University of Maryland, University of Colorado, Temple University, Binghamton University, the University of California at Davis and on a Fulbright-Hays Exchange award he taught American culture at the University of Nice, in France, 1981–1983. He left the University of Colorado in 1989 and he taught at the University of California, Davis, for 18 years before his retirement in 2007.

Recognition

Major won a National Council on the Arts Award for his poetry collection Swallow the Lake in 1970, and the following year was awarded a New York Cultural Foundation grant for poetry. Reflexe et Ossature (1982), the French translation of Reflex and Bone Structure (1975), was nominated for the Prix Maurice Coindreau (1982). Such Was The Season (1987) was a Literary Guild book club selection in 1988. The same year The New York Times Book Review recommended it on its annual "Summer Reading" list. Painted Turtle: Woman With Guitar (1988) was cited by The New York Times Book Review as a "Notable Book of The Year" 1988. In 1990, his short-story collection, Fun & Games, was nominated for the Los Angeles Book Critics Award.

Major won a Bronze Medal as a finalist for the National Book Award in 1999 for Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958–1998 (Copper Canyon Press). He won the Pushcart Prize for the short story "My Mother and Mitch", in 1989. In 2002 he won the Stephen Henderson Poetry Award for Outstanding Achievement, presented by the African American Literature and Culture Society. His 1986 novel My Amputations won the Western States Book Award and was republished in 2008 with an introduction by Lawrence Hogue. Dirty Bird Blues won the Sister Circle Book Award in 1999.

Major was awarded the International Literary Hall of Fame award (Chicago State University) in 2001. He received the "2015 Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts" from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. He was awarded the 26th annual PEN Oakland/Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award on December 3, 2016. In January 2017, From Now On: New and Selected Poems was nominated for the 2017 Northern California Book Award sponsored by The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association.

In 2021, Major was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.

Anthologies

Major has edited several anthologies, most recently Calling the Wind: 20th Century African-American Short Stories (1993) and The Garden Thrives: 20th Century African-American Poetry (1996). His own work has appeared in The Norton Anthology of American Literature and The Pushcart Prize: The Best of The Small Presses, among others.

Periodicals

Major's fiction, poetry, nonfiction and book reviews have appeared in periodicals, including The New Yorker, Harvard Review, The New York Times Book Review, and The Literary Review.

Visual arts

Self-portrait by Clarence Major

Major studied drawing and painting under the direction of painter Gus Nall (1919–1995) from 1952 to 1954. Major also attended sketch and lecture classes during the same period in Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago. Among his teachers there was Addis Osborne (1914–2011).

Education

Major has attended or received degrees from the following institutions:

• A Art Institute of Chicago (James Nelson Raymond scholar), 1952–54.
• Gus Nall Studio, Private Art Lessons, 1950–1954.
• The New School for Social Research (French course only), 1971.
• Norwalk Community College, Norwalk Connecticut, 1972.
• Howard University, Washington D.C., 1974–1975.
• State University of New York, Albany, B.S. 1976.
• Union Institute & University, Yellow Springs and Cincinnati, Ohio, Ph.D. 1978.

Bibliography

Novels

• All-Night Visitors, Northeastern University Press (1969, 1998),
• No, Emerson Hall (1973),
• Reflex and Bone Structure (1975, 1996),
• Emergency Exit (1979),
• My Amputations (1986, 2008),
• Such Was the Season (1987, 2003),
• Painted Turtle: Woman With Guitar (1988, 2015),
• Dirty Bird Blues, Berkley Publishing Group (1996, 1997), ;
• One Flesh, Kensington (2003),
• The Lurking Place, Manic D Press (2021),
• Thunderclouds in the Forecast, Northwestern University Press (2021),
• Dirty Bird Blues (2023), Penguin Classics,
• The Glint of Light (2023), At Bay Press, Hardcover

Short story collections

• Fun & Games (1990),
• Chicago Heat and Other Stories (2016),
• Golden Gate and Other Stories (2023),

Poetry collections

• Swallow the Lake (1970), ,
• Symptoms & Madness (1971), ,
• Private Line (1971), Library of Congress card No. 76-160609
• The Cotton Club (1972),
• The Syncopated Cakewalk (1974),
• Inside Diameter: The France Poems (1985),
• Surfaces and Masks (1988),
• Some Observations of a Stranger at Zuni in the Latter Part of the Century (1989),
• Parking Lots (1992), Perishable Press limited edition handset type
• Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958–1998, Copper Canyon Press (1998),
• Waiting for Sweet Betty, Copper Canyon Press (2002),
• Myself Painting, LSU Press (2008),
• Down and Up (2013),
• From Now On: New and Selected Poems 1970–2015 (2015),
• My Studio, LSU Press (2018),
• Sporadic Troubleshooting (2022),
• Four Days in Algeria (2025),

Nonfiction

• Dictionary of Afro-American Slang (1970), Library of Congress Card Number 79-130863
• Black Slang: A Dictionary of Afro-American Talk, London: Routledge (1971),
• The Dark and Feeling: Black American Writers and Their Work, Okpaku Communications Corp (1974),
• Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (1994),
• Necessary Distance: Essays and Criticism (2000),
• Come by Here: My Mother's Life, Wiley (2002),
• Configurations Paintings by Clarence Major (2010), limited edition exhibition catalogue
• Myself Painting Paintings by Clarence Major (2011), limited edition exhibition catalogue
• Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits of an African-American Postmodernist, ed. Bernard W. Bell (2001),
• The Paintings and Drawings of Clarence Major (2019),

Anthology appearances

• The New Black Poetry (1969),
• Calling the Wind: 20th Century African-American Short Stories, HarperCollins (1993),
• The Garden Thrives: 20th Century African-American Poetry, HarperCollins (1996),
• The Essential Clarence Major: Prose and Poetry, University of North Carolina Press (2020),

External links

• Profile from the Academy of American Poets
• Official website
• Artist websites page
• Clarence Major archives in the Givens Collection, Anderson Library, University of Minnesota