Clarence Major - Biography

Biography

Clarence Major was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1936 and grew up in Chicago. 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 he 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, two marriages, children, and two divorces, he left the Midwest and moved to New York 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. Major 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. Although he had shown a few paintings in group shows at Gales Gallery in Chicago during the 1960s, his first solo exhibition of paintings was at Sarah Lawrence College in the library in the early 1970s.

During this time he was also giving public readings of his poetry. He served on the editorial staff of several literary periodicals and wrote a regular column for American Poetry Review. 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 professor emeritus of 20th-Century American Literature at the University of California at Davis. 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 what Professor Linda Furgerson Selzer calls a "groundbreaking study" of Clarence Major's art and work, see Keith E. Byerman's book, The Art and Life of Clarence Major (ISBN 978-8203-3055-6), Athens: University of Georgia Press (June 2012).