Lucille Clifton (b. 1936) There Is a Girl Inside LINKS Literature and Medicine--Lucille Clifton http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/ webauthors/clifton69-au-.html This brief page includes several of Clifton's poems along with summaries and commentaries. Clifton's page is one of many at the larger, intriguing Literature and Medicine Web site, part of the Hippocrates Project from the NYU School of Medicine. BIOGRAPHY Lucille Clifton (b. 1936) Born in Depew, New York, Clifton attended Howard University (1953–1955) and Fredonia State Teachers College. She worked as a claims clerk in the New York State Division of Employment, Buffalo (1958–1960), and as literature assistant in the Office of Education in Washington, D.C. (1960–1971). In 1969, she received the YM-YWHA Poetry Center Discovery Award, and her first collection, Good Times, was selected as one of the ten best books of 1969 by the New York Times. From 1971 to 1974 she was poet-in-residence at Coppin State College in Baltimore, and in 1979 she was named poet laureate of the state of Maryland. She has written many collections for children and a free-verse chronicle of five generations of her family, Generations: A Memoir (1976). Her most recent volume of poetry is Quilting: Poems 1987–1990 (1991). Noted for celebrating ordinary people and everyday things, Clifton has said, "I am a black woman poet, and I sound like one."