Clint McCown has taught for over forty-five years at some of the country's top schools and writing programs, including Virginia Commonwealth University, the Vermont College of Fine Arts, Wake Forest University, the University of Alabama, Beloit College, the Stonecoast MFA Program, and Indiana University. His works of fiction include the novels Haints (winner of the Midwest Book Award), The Member-Guest (winner of the Society of Midland Authors Award), The Weatherman (winner of the S. Mariella Gable Prize), and War Memorials, as well as the short story collection, Music for Hard Times: New & Selected Stories. The only two-time winner of the American Fiction Prize, he has also received an NEA grant, a Distinction in Literature citation from the Wisconsin Library Association, a Barnes & Noble Great New Writer designation, the Germaine Breé Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and an Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of political corruption and organized crime. His work has appeared in such places as Sewanee Review, North American Review, Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Northwest Review, Mississippi Review, Colorado Review, Kansas Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly, America, Golf Digest, Hotel Amerika, Richmond Noir, Hunger Mountain, and scores of other journals. He is a former editor of Indiana Review and was the founder of the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he edited for twenty years. Additionally, he has published five collections of poems, and he has received three Notable Essay citations in the Best American Essays series. For four years he served as General Editor for the AWP Intro Journals Awards, and he currently serves as a contributing editor for Colorado Review.

He has also worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros., as a Creative Consultant for HBO television, and as a principal actor with the National Shakespeare Company. In 2021 he was inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame at Wake Forest University.