Clint McCown is the only two-time recipient of the American Fiction Prize. He has published four novels (The Member-Guest; War Memorials; The Weatherman; and Haints), and six volumes of poems (Labyrinthiad; Sidetracks; Wind Over Water; Dead Languages; Total Balance Farm; and The Dictionary of Unspellable Noises: New & Selected Poems 1975-2018). He has also received the Midwest Book Award, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the S. Mariella Gable Prize, the Germaine Breé Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers designation, and a Distinction in Literature citation from the Wisconsin Library Association. In journalism, he received an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of organized crime. He has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. and a Creative Consultant for HBO television. He is a former principal actor with the National Shakespeare Company, and several of his plays have been produced.

He has edited a number of literary journals, including the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he founded in 1984. He teaches in the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University and in the low-residency MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.