About
Mark Clemens was born in Missouri, raised in Iowa, migrated to Montana and from there to Washington state. Now he lives on the Olympic Peninsula, hard by the Salish Sea, with his wife Karen, also a writer. He has been a reporter, photographer and layout artist for newspapers; a publications designer and editor for colleges and state agencies; a faculty member in creative writing and English literature; and an emergency public information officer, a.k.a. PIO. In that latter role he worked for Washington state's emergency management agency from 1990 to 2014. He served as a spokesperson during daily operations and over the years on disasters and emergencies that included earthquakes; floods; wildfires; the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle; ice, wind and winter storms; Y2k; and Operation Evergreen to receive Katrina evacuees. In September and October of 2005, he was loaned to the federal government to support recovery operations as a Field PIO on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. There he worked with PIOs from every state of the Union, helping the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast recover from the vast sweep of Katrina's devastation. He saw PIOs who were well-intentioned but hampered by the lack of a common structure and operating procedures. He also saw survivors who were often all the more lost as they tried to navigate the labyrinthine ins and outs of government assistance. His first novel, Infinite Tenderness, is based on that experience. Clemens has degrees in history from Iowa State University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Montana. His stories and poems have appeared in the Mountain Gazette, The North American Review, Gray's Sporting Journal and an array of other literary magazines.