Clarence Major

Clarence Major was born on December 31, 1936, in Atlanta, Georgia,[4] and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. As a teenager he started drawing and painting, writing poetry and fiction.

In his early twenties he started publishing his own literary magazine, Coercion Review, which featured poets and writers such as Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. As a teenager, Major was influenced by the monumental Van Gogh Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, February 1 – April 16, 1950.

After a stint in the Air Force, Major left the Midwest and moved to New York City in December 1966. His first novel, All Night Visitors, was published in 1969 and his first collection of poems, Swallow the Lake, the following year. He briefly worked as a research analyst for Simulmatics, under the direction of sociologist Dr. Sol Chaneles. Major analyzed news coverage of the 1960s riots. He also did field work on the riots, in Detroit and Milwaukee, before turning, in 1967, to teaching.

First, he taught in Harlem at the New Lincoln School, in a summer program. He later taught modern American literature courses and creative writing workshops in universities. His first solo exhibition of paintings was at Sarah Lawrence College in the library in the early 1970s. Along with John A. Williams, in 1968, he taught for a stint at Girard College in Philadelphia.

During this time Major was also giving public readings of his poetry. He served on the editorial staff of several literary periodicals (such as Caw! and The Journal of Black Poetry) and wrote a regular column for The American Poetry Review.[5] He was the first editor of American Book Review. He read his poetry at the Guggenheim Museum, the Folger Theatre and in universities, theaters and cultural centers.

He joined the Fiction Collective in 1974. Major edited High Plains Literary Review for several years. On a State Department-sponsored trip in 1975 he was a participant at the International Poetry Festival in Struga, Yugoslavia, where he read his work with Leopold Sedar Senghor and other poets from around the world. In 1977, with John Ashbery and other poets from various countries, Major read at the Poetry International in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Although he had been painting all along, after moving to California in 1989 he showed his paintings more frequently in galleries.

In 1991, Major served as fiction judge for the National Book Awards. In 1987, he served twice on the National Endowment for the Arts Awards panels; and in 1997–98 he served as judge for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has judged state-sponsored literary contests in Ohio, New York, Washington, Colorado and California.

Major is distinguished professor emeritus of 20th-Century American Literature at the University of California at Davis.[6] His literary archives are in the Givens Collection of African American Literature, Anderson Library of Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota. For the most reliable biographical information on Clarence Major see Contemporary Authors, Volume 337, 2013, pages 270–312, ISBN 978-1-4144-8925-4.

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.

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.[7]

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).[8] 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.[1] 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.[9][10]

• Grant, Struga Yugoslavia International Poetry Festival-U.S. State Department Educational & Cultural Exchange Program, 1975.
• Grant, Fulbright-Hays Inter-University Exchange Award: Franco-American Commission for Educational Exchange—Nice, France, 1981–1983
• Grant, United Kingdom Educational Commission, London, England, 1981.
• Grant, International Communication Agency, American Embassy, London, England, 1982.
• Grant, Commission for Education and Cultural Exchange Between Italy and the U.S. of America, Rome, Italy, 1982.
• Grant, Africa Regional Services, United States International Communication Agency, Paris, France, 1982.
• Grant, IREX (Poland cultural trip), 1984.
• Grant, U.S. Information Service, American Embassy, Paris, France, 1985.

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 following anthologies: Best American Poetry 2019, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature, Postmodern Poetry in America 1950 to the Present, Men of Our Time: Male Poetry in Contemporary America, Dynamics of Violence, Up Late: American Poetry Since 1970, The World's Best Poetry: Supplement IV, Words On The Page, The World In Your Hands, Mirrors: An Introduction to Literature, The Urban Adventures, American Negro Poetry, Where Is Vietnam: American Poets Respond, In A Time of Revolution: Poems From Our Third World, Poems of War Resistance, A Punishment For Peace, Natural Process: An Anthology of New Black Poetry, Black Out Loud: An Anthology of Modern Poems by Black Americans, Inside Outer Space: New Poems From The Space Age, Soulscript: Afro-American Poetry, The Movement Toward a New America, Dices or Black Bones: Black Voices of The Seventies, Black American Literature 1780–Present, Fine Frenzy: Enduring Themes in Poetry, The Modern Age: Literature, The Real Imagination, You Better Believe It: Black Voices in English, Black Spirits: A Festival of New Black Poets in America, New Black Voices, Starting With Poetry, From The Belly of The Shark, The Poetry of Black America: Anthology of the 20th Century, Open Poetry: Four Anthologies of Expanded Poems, The Liberal Art of Interpretation, A New Rhetoric, The Pushcart Prize: The Best of The Small Presses, Contemporary Writing from The Continents, The Point: Where Teaching and Writing Intersect, The Jazz Poetry Anthology; Giavani Poeti Americani (Italy), Heartshape in the Dust: An Anthology of Black American Poetry (Yugoslavia), American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century, Gondola a Signore Signore Gondola: Venice in 20th Century American Poetry (Italy), Govereci Boben (Poland?), The Writing on The Wall, Merry Christmas Baby, Truth to Power, and others. Fiction: Children of The Night, American Made, Calling the Wind, The Avant Garde Today: An International Anthology, Statements, Statements 2, The Sound of Writing, Pushcart XV, Breaking Ice, 19 Necromancers From Now, Ten Times Black: Stories From The Black Experience, Not Normal Illinois, American Made, Love Stories and Writing Under Fire: Stories Of The Vietnam War and others.

Major's fiction, poetry, nonfiction and book reviews have appeared in periodicals, among them: The American Scholar, The New Yorker, Harvard Review, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, Los Angeles Times Book Review, The American Poetry Review, The Baffler, Catamaran, Peacock Journal, The Black Scholar, The Baltimore Sun Magazine Supplement, Upstate [Rochester] Sunday Magazine, The Denver Post, Hampton Road Guide and Journal, The Rocky Mountain News, The San Jose Mercury News, Essence, The Massachusetts Review, Chelsea, Ploughshares, Witness, Boulevard, Michigan Quarterly Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Trace, Negro Digest, The Nickel Review, [Chicago] Sun-Times Showcase, John O'Hare Journal, Kenyon Review, New Myths/MSS, American Review, The Magazine of New Writing, Contact, Folger Poetry Broadside, The Literary Review, Mundus Artium: A Journal of International Literature and the Arts, National Guardian, New York Poetry, The Outsider, Poetry Miscellany, Unmuzzled OX, Yardbird Reader, Works, Callaloo, African American Review, New American Review, Brilliant Corners, A Gathering of The Tribes, Baa Sima (Accra), Black Orpheus (Nigeria), El carno emplumado (Mexico), East and West (India), Fiddlehead (Canada), Gedicht (Antwerp), Interspace (France), In Their Own Words (Italy), New Departures (England), Poetry (England), Pravda (Moscow), Quadrant (Australia), Tautara (Turkey), Vinduet (Norway), and Literatura na Świecie (Poland).

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.[2] Among his teachers there was Addis Osborne (1914–2011).[11]

Major's apprentice artwork was first shown to the public in a group show in the mid-1950s at Gales Gallery on Sixty-Third Street, Chicago. The gallery owner, Mrs. Edna Powell Gale, featured the works of local artists.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Pierre Menard Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge, University Art Gallery Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Sarah Lawrence College, Kresge Art Museum, East Lansing, Michigan, Hamilton Club Gallery, Paterson, New Jersey, Phoenix Gallery, Sacramento CA, Exploding Head Gallery, Sacramento CA, Blue Hills Gallery, Winters, CA, Main Street Gallery, Winters CA, and many other venues.

Self-portrait by Clarence Major

His artwork is in many private collections as well as in several public one: Indiana State University, Terre Haute; Passaic County Community College Permanent Collection of Contemporary Art; the Schacknow Museum of Fine Art, Plantation, Florida; and The Linda Matthews MARBL Collection at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.

His paintings have appeared in many group shows at such galleries as John Natsoulas Gallery (Davis, CA), University of Rochester Art Gallery (Rochester, New York), Denenberg Fine Arts Gallery, Los Angeles, Anita Shapolsky Gallery (New York, New York), 40 Acres Gallery (Sacramento, CA), Main Street Gallery (Winters, CA), Nelson Gallery, University of California at Davis.

Many of his paintings have appeared on covers of his own books, among them Myself Painting, Waiting for Sweet Betty, and Down and Up, three poetry collections. His 1979 novel Emergency Exit contains reproductions of his paintings and his essay collection, Necessary Distance, is illustrated with his drawings. A book on his art and literature, Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits of an African-American Postmodernist by Bernard Bell, appeared in 1998. Conversations with Clarence Major by Nancy Bunge was published in 2002. While focused largely on literature, both books contain Major's views on painting.

Exhibition catalogs: Black: A Celebration of African American Art in Sacramento-Area Collections, 2008; Configurations, paintings by Clarence Major, Pierre Menard Gallery, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, 2010; Myself Painting, paintings by Clarence Major, University Gallery, The Center for Performing Arts, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, 2011; The Writers' Brush: An Exhibition of Art Work by Writers by Donald Friedman and John Wronoski, Introduction by Joseph McElroy, New York: Anita Shapolsky Art Foundation, 2014 (ISBN 978-1-4675-7558-4).

Major curated the exhibition of paintings Spirit Made Visible, containing the works of Robert Colescott, John Abduljaami, Mike Henderson, Oliver Jackson, Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Joe Overstreet, Raymond Saunders, and others, as well by Major himself, at the John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, California, May 9–31, 1992.

• Teaching Areas of Specialization: Modern and Contemporary Literature in English; African-American Literature; Creative Writing in Poetry; Creative writing in Fiction.
• Creative Writing Instructor, The New Lincoln (Summer) School, Harlem, 1967
• Creative Writing Instructor, Girard College, Philadelphia, 1968
• Adjunct Instructor, Brooklyn College, CCUNY, 1968–1969, 1973, 1974–1975
• Adjunct Instructor New York University (night school), 1971
• Adjunct Instructor, Queens College, CCUNY, 1972–1973
• Adjunct Instructor, Sarah Lawrence College, 1972–1975
• Assistant Professor, Howard University, Washington D. C., 1974–1976
• Visiting Creative Writer, University of Maryland, College Park, 1975
• Assistant Professor, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, 1976–1977
• Associate Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 1977–1981
• Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 1981–1989
• Professor, University of California, Davis, 1989–2003
• Distinguished Professor, University of California, 2003–2017
• University of California, San Diego, California, 1981
• University of Nice, France, 1981–1983
• State University of New York Binghamton, 1988
• Temple University, Philadelphia, 1988
• Other academic and writing appointments: Warren Wilson College; Clayton College, Denver; Albany State College, Albany, Georgia; Wisconsin State University, Eau Claire; Cazenovia College, New York; Squaw Valley Community of Writers

Novels

• All-Night Visitors, Northeastern University Press (1969, 1998), ISBN 9781555533670
• No, Emerson Hall (1973), ISBN 0878290060
• Reflex and Bone Structure (1975, 1996), ISBN 1562790846; ISBN 9781562790844
• Emergency Exit (1979), ISBN 9780914590590
• My Amputations (1986, 2008), ISBN 9781573661430
• Such Was The Season (1987, 2003), ISBN 9780916515683
• Painted Turtle: Woman With Guitar (1988, 2015), ISBN 978-0-8263-5600-0
• Dirty Bird Blues, Berkley Publishing Group (1996, 1997), ISBN 0425159035; ISBN 9781562790837
• One Flesh, Kensington (2003), ISBN 9780758204738
• The Lurking Place, Manic D Press (2021), ISBN 9781945665288
• Thunderclouds in the Forecast, Northwestern University Press (2021), ISBN 978-0-8101-4426-2
• Dirty Bird Blues (2023), Penguin Classics, ISBN 978-0143136590
• The Glint of Light (2023), At Bay Press, Hardcover ISBN 9781988168999

Short stories

• Fun & Games (1990), ISBN 0930100344; ISBN 9780930100346
• Chicago Heat and Other Stories (2016), ISBN 978-0-9968973-2-7
• Golden Gate and Other Stories (2023), ISBN 979-8-9871720-1-8

Poetry

• Swallow The Lake (1970), ISBN 0-8195-2054-3, ISBN 0-8195-1054-8
• Symptoms & Madness (1971), ISBN 0-87091-065-5, ISBN 0-87091-064-7
• Private Line (1971), Library of Congress card No. 76-160609
• The Cotton Club (1972), ISBN 0-910296-62-6
• The Syncopated Cakewalk (1974), ISBN 978-0-87929-024-5
• Inside Diameter: The France Poems (1985), ISBN 0-905258-09-6
• Surfaces and Masks (1988), ISBN 9780918273437
• Some Observations of a Stranger at Zuni in The Latter Part of The Century (1989), ISBN 1-55713-020-5
• Parking Lots (1992), Perishable Press limited edition handset type
• Configurations: New and Selected Poems 1958–1998, Copper Canyon Press (1998), ISBN 978-1556590900
• Waiting for Sweet Betty, Copper Canyon Press (2002), ISBN 1556591799
• Myself Painting, LSU Press (2008), ISBN 9780807133668
• Down and Up (2013), ISBN 978-0-8203-4594-9; ISBN 0-8203-4594-6
• From Now On: New and Selected Poems 1970–2015 (2015), ISBN 978-0-8203-4796-7
• My Studio, LSU Press (2018), ISBN 978-0-8071-6900-1
• Sporadic Troubleshooting (2022), ISBN 0807176109, ISBN 978-0807176108

Nonfiction

• Dictionary of Afro-American Slang (1970), ISBN 0-7178-0268-X Library of Congress Card Number 79-130863[12]
• Black Slang: A Dictionary of Afro-American Talk, London: Routledge (1971), ISBN 9780710071798
• The Dark and Feeling: Black American Writers and Their Work, Okpaku Communications Corp (1974), ISBN 978-0893881184
• Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang (1994), ISBN 9780140513066
• Necessary Distance: Essays and Criticism (2000), ISBN 1566891094
• Come by Here: My Mother's Life, Wiley (2002), ISBN 9780471415183
• 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), ISBN 9780807848999
• The Paintings and Drawings of Clarence Major (2019), ISBN 978-1496820686

Anthologies

• The New Black Poetry (1969), ISBN 978-0717801381
• Calling The Wind: 20th Century African-American Short Stories, HarperCollins (1993), ISBN 9780060183370
• The Garden Thrives: 20th Century African-American Poetry, HarperCollins (1996), ISBN 9780060553647
• The Essential Clarence Major: Prose and Poetry, University of North Carolina Press (2020), ISBN 978-1469656007

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