Clifford Thompson is the author of a memoir, Twin of Blackness (2015), the collection Love for Sale and Other Essays (2013), and the novel Signifying Nothing (2009). His personal essays and pieces on books, film, jazz, and American identity have found homes in publications including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, The Times Literary Supplement, The Threepenny Review, The Iowa Review, Commonweal, Film Quarterly, Cineaste, Oxford American, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Best American Essays 2018. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award in Nonfiction and for over a dozen years served as the editor of Current Biography. He has taught creative nonfiction writing at The Bennington Writing Seminars, Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, Queens College, and New York University. He lives in Brooklyn.
-
Love for Sale and Other EssaysFrom"Dreams of Laura"
At my desk, with my pen, pencil, markers, ruler, and thick white paper, I was in command. And when I drew the superhero who was my alter-ego, I gave him —i.e., myself—what in all my shyness I didn’t have: a girlfriend. She was as pretty as my limited skills could make her. Her name was Laura.
Love for Sale:And Other Essays -
Love for Sale and Other EssaysFrom"On Jazz: Notes of an Enthusiast"
A major difference between the trumpet and the sax has to do with adaptability. In the right hands, the saxophone—baritone, tenor, alto, or soprano—becomes an extension of the person playing it; the trumpet remains the trumpet.
Love for Sale:And Other Essays -
Love for Sale and Other EssaysFrom"For Bean"
For a child there is nothing like such talk among adults, even if the child is not listening or consciously aware of hearing it. What are important are not so much the words as the tide of sound on which they reach the ear: the low, whiskey-and tobacco-tinged voices of the men; the knowing tones of the women—sounds that tell a small boy, as he plays on the floor with plastic soldiers, that while he may not understand the workings of the world, he is in the care of people who do.
Love for Sale:And Other Essays
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Find your local bookstore (via IndieBound)
- Bookshop
- Print Books
- Find your local bookstore (via IndieBound)
- Powell's
- Barnes & Noble
- Alibris
- Abe Books
- E-Books
- Kobo
- Barnes & Noble
Clifford Thompson’s books include What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues (2019), which Time magazine called one of the “most anticipated” books of the season, and the graphic novel Big Man and the Little Men (2022), which he wrote and illustrated. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Best American Essays, The Times Literary Supplement, Commonweal, and The Threepenny Review, among other places, and his essay “La Bohème” was selected for the 2024 Pushcart Prize Anthology. Thompson’s book Jazz June: A Self-Portrait in Essays will be published by the University of Georgia Press in the fall of 2025. Additionally, his novels Miles from Home and Let Us Go Then, You and I are forthcoming from Running Wild Press. A painter, he is a member of Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City. He was born and raised in Washington, DC and attended Oberlin College.