Claire Van Winkle received her BA at New York University and completed her MFA at Queens College, where she studied poetry writing and literary translation. Claire currently teaches grammar, composition, creative writing, and literature at CUNY and SUNY. She is the founder of the Rockaway Writers' Workshop. She also runs writing therapy groups at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.

Claire has been the recipient of several honors including the inaugural Queens College Foundation Scholarship for Poetry Writing and Literary Translation, an American Literary Translators Association Travel Fellowship, an American Academy of Poets Award, the Mary M. Fay Poetry Award, and the Lenore Lipstein Memorial Prize for Formal Poetry. Her work appears in the American Journal of Poetry, Sixfold, 3 Percent, Belle Ombre (forthcoming in Summer 2020), and anthologies by Rogue Scholars and Black Lawrence Press.