William Clipman

Will Clipman is a musician, poet, maskmaker, storyteller, and interdisciplinary performance artist. He began writing poetry and stories at the age of six, with the inspiration and guidance of his grandmother, and went on to earn a BA degree in creative writing and magazine journalism from Syracuse University, and an MFA degree in poetry from the University of Arizona.

He is the author of the poetry collection Dog Light (Wesleyan University Press, 1981). His writing has also appeared in anthologies such as Dog Music, The Ellensburg Anthology, The National Poetry Competition Winners Anthology 1991 & 1992, Syracuse Poems 1975, Tumblewords: Writers Reading the West, and University of Arizona Poetry Center 1960-1985, and journals such as Amaranth Review, The Circle, Coyote, Green Zero, Greenfield Review, Heron Dance, Intro, Ironwood, Louisville Review, Obsidian, Protea Poetry Journal, Rhetoric Review, Shandoka, Southern Poetry Review, Stone Drum, Syracuse Review, Walking Rain Review, and Yakima.

Clipman has taught creative writing at the University of Arizona, Pima Community College, Kino Psychiatric Hospital, the Arizona State Prison, and in more than one hundred elementary, middle, and high schools. He has also served on the faculties of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Teacher Institute, White Mountains Summer Fine Arts, Tucson Summer Fine Arts, Catalina Foothills Community School, and the Aspen Environmental Dance Symposium; as a panelist for the "Healing Through the Arts" Symposium, the Tucson/Pima Arts Council, and the Arizona Commission on the Arts; and as Poet-in-Residence for the Modem Poetry Association's "Poets in Person" Series. His honors include the Whiffen Poetry Prize (1975), the Academy of American Poets Margaret Sterling Award (1980), and the Tucson/Pima Arts Council Poetry Fellowship (1993). In 1990, his poem "The Quiet Power" was selected as the dedicatory poem for the new Tucson Main Library.