I have loved to write since grade school.

Cheryl Clarke is the author Narratives: poems in the tradition of black women (1982); Living as a Lesbian (1986), Humid Pitch (1989), Experimental Love (1993), the critical study, After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (2005), and her collected works The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005 (2006),  By My Precise Haircut (Word Works Press, 2016), Archive of Style: New and Selected Poems (Northwestern University Press, 20-- ), Targets (Bushel Editions, 2025), Acts of Resistance: Essential Essays, Archival Encounters, and New Poems (Sinister Wisdom Press, 2026). Narratives: Poems in the Tradition Of Black Women was digitized in 2014. Living as a Lesbian (1986) was reprinted by Sinister Wisdom and Midsummer Night Presses in 2014. 

I retired from Rutgers University in 2013, where I worked for 41 years. At Rutgers, I served as the founding Director of the Office for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities 1992 to 2009, and as the Dean of Students of the Livingston Campus from 2009-2013. I taught as a member of the graduate faculty in the Department of Women and Gender Studies for. I currently spend much of my time co-organizing the annual Hobart Festival of Women Writers, in Hobart, New York, the Book Village of the Catskills. And, of course, I continue to write, my life-long pursuit.

Clarke’s writing has appeared in numerous publications since 1979, including the iconic feminist collections This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Anzaldua and Moraga, eds., 1982) and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Smith, ed., 1983). In 2012, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center (N.Y.) presented Clarke with the David Kessler Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to LGBT communities.