As a student at the University of Kansas, Maxine Clair studied science and trained for a career in medical technology.
Maxine Clair studied in an M.F.A. program at George Washington University.
As a student at the University of Kansas, Maxine Clair studied science and trained for a career in medical technology.
Maxine Clair studied in an M.F.A. program at George Washington University.
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Maxine Clair was born and raised in Kansas City, Kansas, in the 1950s, to Lucy Smith Clair. She describes her childhood surroundings as “a very circumscribed community of African- Americans in a larger white society.”
She traces her musical sensibility to sing-alongs in which she would join her eight siblings while her mother played the piano.
As a student at the University of Kansas, Maxine Clair studied science and trained for a career in medical technology. She eventually enjoyed a substantial career in her chosen field.
She also successfully studied in an M.F.A. program at George Washington University.
While working as chief technologist for a children’s hospital in Washington, DC, Clair determined to write. She abandoned her technologist position and began reworking portions of her journal entries into poems. In 1988, she produced her first book, the poetry collection Coping with Gravity. Four years later she published the fiction chapbook October Brown, for which she received an Artscape Prize honoring Maryland writers. In addition to completing these books, Clair supplied contributions to various periodicals, including Icarus, Kenyon Review, and Victoria. Clair followed October Brown with the novel Rattlebone, which is probably her best-known work.
Her most recent work is October Suite, published in 2001. This novel takes a character from her chapbook October Brown and her novel Rattlebone and explores her life and experiences as an unwed teacher and African-American mother in the 1950s. The novel is a journey of self-discovery for its lead character, October Brown, and was well received by critics.
Clair always strives to be both expressive and articulate.
Quotations: “What I am after, both in poetry and prose, is to get the message across with some sound, with some beauty of the words themselves. I want to fit the words together that express the rhythm and cadences that are there in life. I always want to hold on to the language. The language for me is about music.”
Clair is married. She has four children.
