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Roy Peter Clark
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Roy Peter Clark
Roy Peter Clark (born 1948) is an American writer, editor, and a writing coach. He is also senior scholar and vice president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the founder of the National Writers Workshop. Clark has appeared on several radio and television talk shows, speaking about journalism ethics and other writing issues.
Clark is a native of the Lower East Side of New York City, and was raised on Long Island. His mother was of half-Italian and half-Jewish ancestry, and Clark was raised Catholic. Clark earned a degree in English (1970) from Providence College, Rhode Island, where he was editor of The Alembic, a literary journal, and managing editor of the student-run newspaper, The Cowl. Clark earned a Ph.D. in English, specializing in medieval literature, from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
In 1974, Clark began teaching English at Auburn University at Montgomery, Alabama. Newspaper columns he wrote during that time attracted the attention of Eugene Patterson, editor of the St. Petersburg Times. Patterson hired Clark in 1977 as a reporter and to work with the newspaper’s staff as a writing coach.
Since 1979, Clark has worked as a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, the non-profit organization that now owns Times Publishing Company, which publishes the St. Petersburg Times. Clark is listed as one of the Directors and Officers of The Poynter Institute. Andrea Pitzer, writing for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, has called Clark “one of narrative journalism’s hardest working midwives.”
He has written the books Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer (Little, Brown and Company, 2006), The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English (Little, Brown and Company, 2010), and Help! For Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces (Little, Brown and Company, 2011).
On December 12, 2023, the Poynter Institute announced the creation of a new prize in honor of Clark called The Roy Peter Clark Award for Excellence in Short Writing.
Clark wrote several articles based on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, some of which were published in The Chaucer Review, in which he discusses Chaucer's parodying of Church teachings and rituals. His PhD dissertation was titled "Chaucer and Medieval Scatology".
As a journalist, Clark revitalized the serial article form when, in 1996, he wrote a 29-part serial narrative piece called "Three Little Words", which chronicled the story of one family's experience with AIDS. The article generated more than 8,000 phone calls to the newspaper.
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Roy Peter Clark
Roy Peter Clark (born 1948) is an American writer, editor, and a writing coach. He is also senior scholar and vice president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the founder of the National Writers Workshop. Clark has appeared on several radio and television talk shows, speaking about journalism ethics and other writing issues.
Clark is a native of the Lower East Side of New York City, and was raised on Long Island. His mother was of half-Italian and half-Jewish ancestry, and Clark was raised Catholic. Clark earned a degree in English (1970) from Providence College, Rhode Island, where he was editor of The Alembic, a literary journal, and managing editor of the student-run newspaper, The Cowl. Clark earned a Ph.D. in English, specializing in medieval literature, from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
In 1974, Clark began teaching English at Auburn University at Montgomery, Alabama. Newspaper columns he wrote during that time attracted the attention of Eugene Patterson, editor of the St. Petersburg Times. Patterson hired Clark in 1977 as a reporter and to work with the newspaper’s staff as a writing coach.
Since 1979, Clark has worked as a faculty member at the Poynter Institute, the non-profit organization that now owns Times Publishing Company, which publishes the St. Petersburg Times. Clark is listed as one of the Directors and Officers of The Poynter Institute. Andrea Pitzer, writing for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, has called Clark “one of narrative journalism’s hardest working midwives.”
He has written the books Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer (Little, Brown and Company, 2006), The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English (Little, Brown and Company, 2010), and Help! For Writers: 210 Solutions to the Problems Every Writer Faces (Little, Brown and Company, 2011).
On December 12, 2023, the Poynter Institute announced the creation of a new prize in honor of Clark called The Roy Peter Clark Award for Excellence in Short Writing.
Clark wrote several articles based on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, some of which were published in The Chaucer Review, in which he discusses Chaucer's parodying of Church teachings and rituals. His PhD dissertation was titled "Chaucer and Medieval Scatology".
As a journalist, Clark revitalized the serial article form when, in 1996, he wrote a 29-part serial narrative piece called "Three Little Words", which chronicled the story of one family's experience with AIDS. The article generated more than 8,000 phone calls to the newspaper.
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