19 Facts About Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from Buffalo, New York.

Lucille Clifton attended Howard University with a scholarship from 1953 to 1955, leaving to study at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

In 1958, Lucille Sayles married Fred James Clifton, a professor of philosophy at the University at Buffalo, and a sculptor whose carvings depicted African faces.

From 1971 to 1974, Lucille Clifton was poet-in-residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore.

From 1985 to 1989, Lucille Clifton was a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Lucille Clifton was Distinguished Professor of Humanities at St Mary's College of Maryland.

In 2019, daughter Sidney Lucille Clifton reacquired the family's home near Baltimore, aiming to establish the Lucille Clifton House as a place to support young artists and writers through in-person and virtual workshops, classes, seminars, residencies, and a gallery.

The Lucille Clifton House received preservation funding through the National Trust for Historic Preservation's African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

Lucille Clifton traced her family's roots to the West African kingdom of Dahomey, now the Republic of Benin.

Lucille Clifton's two extra fingers were amputated surgically when she was a small child, a common practice at that time for reasons of superstition and social stigma.

In 1969, Lucille Clifton published her first volume of poetry, Good Times, which drew inspiration from her six young children at the time.

Three years later in 1972, Lucille Clifton published her second volume, Good News About the Earth: New Poems.

The Poetry Foundation has noted that this work pointed towards the trend Lucille Clifton would develop in her career of not shying away from social and political issues in her writing as she paid tribute to Black political leaders.

In 1980, Lucille Clifton published "homage to my hips" in her book of poems, Two-Headed Woman.

The book delves into Lucille Clifton's personal fight against breast cancer as well as involves itself with mythology, religion, and the legacy of slavery.

Lucille Clifton received a Creative Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1970 and 1973, and a grant from the Academy of American Poets.

Lucille Clifton received the Charity Randall prize, the Jerome J Shestack Prize from the American Poetry Review, and an Emmy Award.

In 1988, Lucille Clifton became the first author to have two books of poetry named finalists for one year's Pulitzer Prize.

In 2010, Lucille Clifton received the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement from the Poetry Society of America.