Blackbird ArchiveClint McCown
Clint McCown is the author of the novels Haints (New Rivers Press, 2012), The Weatherman (Graywolf Press, 2004), War Memorials (Graywolf Press, 2000), and The Member-Guest (Doubleday, 1995), as well as the poetry collections The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises: New & Selected Poems, 1975 – 2018 (Press 53, 2019), Total Balance Farm (Press 53, 2017), Dead Languages (Anhinga Press, 2008), Wind Over Water (Northwoods Press, 1984), and Sidetracks (Jackpine Press, 1977). He has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. and as a Creative Consultant for HBO Television and had several plays produced. As a broadcast journalist he received an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of organized crime and political corruption. He twice won the American Fiction Prize and has received the S. Mariella Gable Prize, the Midwest Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the Germaine Breé Book Award, a Distinction in Literature citation from the Wisconsin Library Association, an NEA grant, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a Discover Great New Writers designation from Barnes & Noble. He has twice received Notable Essay citations in the Best American Essays series. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared in over seventy-five national journals and magazines. He has been a contributing editor to a dozen literary magazines and was the founding editor of the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he edited for twenty years . In April 2020, he is scheduled for induction into the Wake Forest University Writers Hall of Fame. He teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Jessie van Eerden is the author of the portrait essay collection The Long Weeping (Orison Books, 2017), as well as two novels: My Radio Radio (Vandalia Press, 2016) and Glorybound (WordFarm, 2012). Her work has appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing , Oxford American , Willow Springs , and other magazines and anthologies. She has been awarded the Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, the Milton Fellowship, and a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Van Eerden holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and teaches creative writing at Hollins University. Photo by David Flores
Clint McCown is the author of four novels, most recently Haints (New Rivers Press, 2012). His other novels include The Weather Man (Graywolf Press, 2004), War Memorials (2000), and The Member-Guest (Doubleday, 1995), as well as three books of poetry. He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize and has won the American Fiction Prize twice from New Rivers Press. His other awards include the Society of Midland Authors Award, the Sister Mariella Gable Award, and a Germaine Bree Book Award, among others. He has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros., a creative consultant for HBO, an actor with the National Shakespeare Company, and as a broadcast journalist, for which he received an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence. McCown received his MFA from Indiana University, where he served as editor of Indiana Review . He was founding editor and publisher of Beloit Fiction Journal which he published for twenty years, and currently teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University.