Jennifer Clement Explained

Birth Place:Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation:Author
Nationality:American-Mexican
Education:New York University (BA)
University of Southern Maine (MFA)
Notableworks:Widow Basquiat, A True Story Based on Lies, Prayers for the Stolen, Gun Love
Module:
Embed:yes
Office:President of
PEN International
Termstart:October 2015
Termend:October 2021
Predecessor:John Ralston Saul
Successor:Burhan Sönmez

Jennifer Clement (born 1960) is an American-Mexican author. Clement has written several novels, including Gun Love (2018) and Prayers for the Stolen (2014), and published several collections of poetry. She was the first woman president of PEN International in 2015.

Early life and education

Born in 1960 in Greenwich, Connecticut, Clement moved in 1961 with her family to Mexico City, where she later attended Edron Academy. She moved to the United States to finish high school at Cranbrook Kingswood School, before studying English Literature and Anthropology at New York University. She received her MFA from the University of Southern Maine.[1]

She is the co-director and founder, with her sister Barbara Sibley, of the San Miguel Poetry Week. Clement lives in Mexico City, Mexico.

Writing career

Clement's first book, Widow Basquiat, is a memoir about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat's relationship with his muse Suzanne Mallouk—told from Mallouk's perspective.[2] It was originally published in 2000 and re-released in 2014 as Widow Basquiat: A Love Story.[3] Glenn O'Brien in Artforum wrote: "Magical…Widow Basquiat conjures real characters, a real time and real place. It's not theory – it's representation. … The life of Basquiat … is a joyous lightning bolt when it is described in true detail, as it is in Clement's extraordinary as-told-to poem."[4]

Her first novel, A True Story Based on lies, was a finalist in the Orange Prize for Fiction.[5]

Prayers for the Stolen came out in 2014 and became a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice Book, First Selection for National Reading Group Month's Great Group Reads, and appeared internationally on many "Best Books of the Year" lists, including The Irish Times.[6]

Auf der Zunge ("On the Tip of the Tongue"[7]), was published by Suhrkamp in Germany in April 2022.[8]

Clement is also the author of several books of poetry: The Next Stranger with an introduction by W. S. Merwin (1993), Newton's Sailor, Lady of the Broom (2002) and Jennifer Clement: New and Selected Poems (2008).

Her prize-winning story A Salamander-Child is published as an art book, with work by the Mexican painter Gustavo Monroy.

Other activities

She is a member of Mexico's prestigious Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. Jennifer Clement, along with her sister Barbara Sibley, is the founder and director The San Miguel Poetry Week.[9]

She served as President of PEN Mexico from 2009 to 2012.[10] In 2015, she was elected as the first woman president of PEN International, an organization founded in 1921. Under her leadership, the groundbreaking PEN International Women's Manifesto and The Democracy of the Imagination Manifesto were created.[11]

As president of PEN Mexico she spoke extensively about the safety of journalists in Mexico and was instrumental in raising the issue and changing the law so that the killing of a journalist became a federal crime.[12]

In 2021 she was one of the authors who produced Pen International: An Illustrated History: Literature Knows No Frontiers. [13] [14]

Film

Recognition and awards

Clement was awarded the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship for Literature in 2012 for her novel Prayers for the Stolen and was honored with The Sara Curry Humanitarian Award for that work. She is also the recipient of the UK's Canongate Prize. Clement is a Santa Maddalena Foundation Fellow, the MacDowell Colony's Robert and Stephanie Olmsted Fellow for 2007-08 and, in 2015, was chosen to be a City of Asylum Resident in Pittsburgh, PA. In 2016, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her new novel Gun Love. Gun Love was named one of Time magazine's top 10 books of 2019 and was also a New York Times Editor's Choice Book, and a National Book Award finalist, among other honors.[15] [16]

Clement's books have been translated into 36 languages.

Other honors and awards include:

Notes and References

  1. Encyclopedia: Hamilton . Geoff . Jones, Brian . Clement, Jennifer p.68 . Encyclopedia of Contemporary Writers and Their Work . Infobase Publishing . 2009 . 9781438129709 . 7 April 2011 .
  2. Web site: Lewis. Miles Marshall. July 17, 2001. Portrait of the Artist's Girlfriend . 2021-01-01 . The Village Voice.
  3. Web site: From Muse To Outcast, A Woman Comes of Age In 'Widow Basquiat'. Rebecca . Walker. 9 February 2014. NPR.
  4. Web site: Glenn. O'Brien. Jean-Michel Basquiat. 2021-01-01. Artforum. en-US. April 2015.
  5. Web site: Jennifer Clement: 'I always have believed that literature can change the world'. Gaby. Wood. Gaby Wood. 10 February 2014. telegraph.uk.
  6. News: Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement – review. 13 February 2014. The Guardian. Kirsty. Gunn.
  7. Web site: auf der Zunge liegen . Cambridge Dictionary . 15 November 2023 . 22 November 2023.
  8. Web site: Clement . Jennifer . Auf der Zunge. Buch von Jennifer Clement . Suhrkamp Verlag . 10 April 2022 . Nicolai . von Schweder-Schreiner. de . 22 November 2023.
  9. Web site: Faculty Jennifer Clement. 24 December 2017. San Miguel Poetry.
  10. Web site: An Interview with PEN Mexico President Jennifer Clement. 8 February 2013. Sampsonia Way.
  11. Web site: Mexican-American writer, Jennifer Clement, elected first woman president to lead PEN International as John Ralston Saul steps down after six years . PEN International. 17 October 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20160421083530/http://www.pen-international.org/newsitems/mexican-american-writer-jennifer-clement-elected-first-woman-president-to-lead-pen-international-as-john-ralston-saul-steps-down-after-six-years/ . 21 April 2016 . dead . 22 November 2023.
  12. Web site: How Author Jennifer Clement Is Defending Freedom of Expression with Her Pen. Jeannie . Ralston . 17 May 2017. NextTribe.
  13. Pen International: An Illustrated History: Literature Knows No Frontiers, by Carles Torner, Jennifer Clement, Peter D. McDonald, Jan Martens, Ginevra Avalle, Rachel Potter, and Laetitia Zecchini, 2021. Northampton, Massachusetts: Interlink Books, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group.
  14. Bradford, Timothy. “PEN International: An Illustrated History by Ginevra Avalle et Al.” World Literature Today 96, no. 3 (2022): 64–65.
  15. Web site: Jennifer Clement. 24 December 2017. canongate.co.uk.
  16. Web site: Jennifer Clement. 24 December 2017. Guggenheim Foundation.

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