Patricia Clark's Biography

Patricia Clark is Poet-in-Residence and Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University. She is the author of two books of poetry: My Father on a Bicycle and North of Wondering. Her poetry has appeared in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Slate, Poetry, Mississippi Review, The Gettysburg Review, New Letters, New England Review, Pennsylvania Review, North American Review, and The Seattle Review. She has also co-edited an anthology of contemporary women writers called Worlds in Our Words.

Patricia's roots are in the Pacific Northwest, where she graduated from the University of Washington (in economics), going on to receive an MFA in English and creative writing from the University of Montana and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Houston.

The Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan from 2005-2007, Patricia Clark was invited with two other poets to open the Library of Congress's noon reading series in Washington, D.C. in fall 2005. Awards for her work include The Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, 2nd prize in the Pablo Neruda/NIMROD awards, co-winner of the Lucille Medwick Award (Poetry Society of America), the Gwendolyn Brooks Prize, and a Creative Artist grant from ArtServe Michigan as well as residencies at The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ragdale, and the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland.