Ryan Clark

Ryan Clark teaches English in the High School Academic Program, following fifteen years of experience teaching Creative Writing, Literature, Linguistics and Composition at the college level.

He held previous teaching positions at Naropa University, Illinois State University, Savannah State University and Waldorf University, where he served as both Director of Creative Writing and English Department Chair. A working poet, he has published two books and his poems have appeared in numerous journals.

Following Audre Lorde’s declaration that poetry is not a luxury but is vital and necessary to our existence, I view the writing classroom as an essential site of engagement, both with language and with other people.

Ryan Clark

Career Highlights

• Bringing one of his former students back to campus to read from her first collection of poems.
• Honing a unique method of homophonic translation as a means of writing poetry, and using this method to publish poems in numerous journals as well as two full-length collections: "How I Pitched the First Curve" (Lit Fest Press, 2019) & "Arizona SB 1070: An Act" (Downstate Legacies, 2021). 
• Presenting and moderating a panel at an international seminar on Documentary Poetry, Popular Protest & Activism at The American University of Paris in 2023.

Awards, Recognitions and Honors

• Professor of the Year, Waldorf University (2019).

• Action, Spectacle 2024 Chapbook Contest Winner, for “Suppose / a Presence.”
• Finalist for C&R Press Prize in Poetry (2023), Interim’s Test Site Poetry Prize (2019), Slope Editions Book Prize (2018), and St. Lawrence Book Award (2008).
• Best of the Net Nominations for Poetry (2018, 2019, 2022).
• 1st Place in Poetry, San Antonio Writers’ Guild Annual Writing Contest (2018).
• Head Writing Fellow, Naropa University (2007-2008).
• M.F.A. First Mondays Spring Writing Contest Winner, University of Mississippi (2006).
• Somerville Award for Fiction, University of Mississippi (2006).
• Inducted into Sigma Tau Delta English Honor Society (2006).

Organizations

• Association of Writers & Writing Programs