Maxine Clair

Maxine Clair was born (born 1939) and raised in Kansas City, Kansas. She is the author of the poetry collection Coping with Gravity and the novel The October Suite. On its first publication, in 1994, Rattlebone, her debut, received both the Literary Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction in 1995. Clair is a professor emerita at George Washington University.