Heather Clark earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Harvard University and her doctorate in English from Oxford University. She is the author of two award-winning books on post-war poetry, The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962–1972. Her latest book, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath appeared in 2021 to critical acclaim. It was selected as a New York Times Top 10 Book of the Year, Book Of The Year In The Daily Telegraph And The Times and Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography 2021.
Heather divides her time between Chappaqua, New York, and Yorkshire, England, where she is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the University of Huddersfield.