Author Biography

Born in 1936 to working-class parents Samuel Louis and Thelma Lucille Sayles, Lucille Clifton grew up in Depew, New York. She is descended from a long line of strong, resilient women who have battled and overcome adversity. Her great-great grandmother, Caroline Donald, whom Clifton cites as the inspiration for much of her poetry, was kidnapped from her home in Dahomey, West Africa, and brought to America along with her mother, sister, and brother. Clifton gives a full accounting of her family’s story in her 1976 memoir Generations. After attending Howard University and Fredonia State Teachers College (now State University of New York College at Fredonia), Clifton worked as a claims clerk for the New York State Division of Employment and then as a literature assistant for the Central Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory. She began teaching in 1971 at Coppin State College after winning the Discovery Award from the New York YW-YMHA Poetry Center and publishing Good Times: Poems in 1969, named by the New York Times as one of the year’s ten best books. Since then, Clifton has garnered numerous other awards including National Endowment for the Arts awards, 1969, 1970, and 1972; the Juniper Prize for Two-Headed Woman from the University of Massachusetts in 1980; two Pulitzer Prize nominations for her poetry; the Lannan Literary Award for poetry in 1996 for The Terrible Stories; a 1999 Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award; and a National Book Award for poetry in 2000 for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988 – 2000. Clifton is also an accomplished writer of children’s books. Some of these include My Brother Fine with Me (1975), Three Wishes (1976), Amifika (1977), and The Lucky Stone (1979). She has also authored the popular Everett Anderson series of books for juveniles.

Her poetry is rooted in her experience as an African-American woman raised in an impoverished urban environment, who has a strong and enduring love for her family and community. Critics praise her work as fresh and honest and cite her ability to craft powerful, evocative images that express pride in her identity as a black woman. However, her most powerful poems, such as “Climbing,” transcend gender and race to get at the heart of the human condition. Since 1990, Clifton has been St. Mary’s Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.