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Clint McCown is an American author, poet, journalist, editor, actor, and university professor. He teaches fiction writing and screenwriting in the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low-residency MFA program for the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Early life and education
A native of Tennessee, McCown spent his youth in Birmingham, Alabama and in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His father was a Secret Service agent assigned to Dwight D. Eisenhower's protective detail, and in his teens McCown worked as the yard boy on the Eisenhower farm.

He received B.A. and M.A. degrees from Wake Forest University and an M.F.A. from Indiana University. He received professional theatre training at the Circle in the Square Theatre School on Broadway in 1973-74.

Career
McCown toured as a principal actor with the National Shakespeare Company and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre. Several of his plays have been produced. From 1976-78 he worked as poet/dramatist-in-residence for the North Carolina Visiting Artist program.

In 1978-79 he worked as Capitol Reporter for the Alabama Information Network, a chain of sixty-seven affiliated radio stations in Alabama. For his investigations of organized crime and political corruption, he received an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence in 1978.

After a stint as editor of Indiana Review, he taught at Beloit College in Wisconsin, where he founded and the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he edited for twenty years. He served four years as General Editor of the Intro Journals Project for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.

He currently teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he has served as program director; and in the low-residency MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Awards
His work has received several awards, including the Midwest Book Award for Fiction, the Sister Mariella Gable Prize, the Society of Midland Authors Award for Adult Fiction, the Germaine Breé Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers designation, and a Distinction in Literature Citation from the Wisconsin Library Association. He also received an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of organized crime and political corruption. In 2020 he was slated for induction into the Writers Hall of Fame at Wake Forest University.

In short fiction, he is the only two-time recipient of the American Fiction Prize[xii]--in 1991 for “Home Course Advantage,” selected by Louise Erdrich, and in 1993 for “Mule Collector,” selected by Wallace Stegner.

Books

 * Labyrinthiad (poems, Bard Press, 1975)
 * Sidetracks (poems, Jackpine Press 1977)
 * Wind Over Water (poems, Northwoods Press, 1984)
 * The Member-Guest (novel, cloth, Doubleday, 1995)
 * War Memorials (novel, Graywolf Press, cloth, 2000; Houghton Mifflin, pbk., 2001
 * The Weatherman (novel, Graywolf Press, cloth, 2004)
 * Dead Languages (poems, Anhinga Press, 2008)
 * Haints (novel, New Rivers Press, 2012)
 * Total Balance Farm (poems, Press 53, 2017)
 * The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises: New and Selected Poems, 1975-2018 (poems, Press 53, 2019)
 * Music for Hard Times: Selected Stories (stories, Press 53, forthcoming 2021)

Other work
His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in more than seventy-five anthologies and periodicals, including North American Review, The Sewanee Review, Colorado Review, The Southern Review, Southern Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Ascent, Tampa Review, Hawaii Review, Nimrod, Hotel Amerika, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, Northwest Review, America, Blackbird, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and Golf Digest. He has received two Notable Essay citations in the Best American Essays series. Three of his plays have been produced. Additionally, he worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. in 1997-98 and served as a creative consultant for HBO Television from 2010-13.