Clifford Barnes

I grew up in an economically depressed neighborhood of inner city Houston called Acres Homes. After a rather successful criminal career, I was finally convicted of an aggravated robbery of a convenience store and sentenced to twelve years. During this period of incarceration, I spent an enormous amount of time reading literature and philosophy. After about three years of incarceration, I decided that I wanted to write and have done so nearly every day since then. I have completed one novel in the last eight years and have another one currently in progress. Yet to publish any books, I have had a wide variety of pieces published in literary journals, academic journals, newspapers and radical zines. I am one semester shy of completing an M.A. in Literature from the University of Houston, Clear Lake, and will be released and finished with my sentence shortly after that on November 21, 2007.