Claire Donato

Claire Donato is the author of three full-length books: Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts (Archway Editions), a collection of short stories; Burial (Tarpaulin Sky Press), a fiction novella; and The Second Body (Poor Claudia), a poetry collection. Her most recent chapbook is Woebegone and Other Poems (Theaphora Editions), for which she co-wrote an accompanying video game. Recent writing has appeared in Parapraxis, Fence, The Chicago Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Car Crash Collective Anthology, Forever, Oversound, Fonograf Editions’ FE, and BOMB, and she is currently writing a novel.

In the Writing Department at Pratt, Claire serves as Assistant Chairperson and MFA Advisor. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor who advises MFA and BFA Writing capstone theses, supervises independent studies, and teaches electives including Autofiction; Poetry and Psychoanalysis; Twin, Doppelgänger, Double, Diptych; Small Worlds, Miniature Forms; Digital Poetry; The Poetics of Love; and The Oceanic Feeling. In 2020, she received Pratt Institute’s Distinguished Teacher Award, an honor conferred by the Faculty Senate and Board of Trustees for which she was nominated by the student body. She has also taught at Parsons (The New School for Design), Rutgers University, The Cooper Union, Brown University, and 826 Valencia/NYC.

In addition to her teaching and administrative work, Claire is an LP candidate in psychoanalysis at the Psychoanalytic Training Institute of the Contemporary Freudian Society.

MFA, 2010, Literary Arts, Brown University
BA (summa cum laude), 2008, English Writing, University of Pittsburgh

Contributor to The Mystery of Perception: A Conversation with Lynne Tillman, 2025, Archway Editions. 

Woebegone, 2025, Theaphora Editions.

Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts, 2023, Archway Editions.

Introduction to The One on Earth: Selected Works of Mark Baumer, 2021, Fence Books.

The Second Body, 2016, Poor Claudia.

Burial, 2013, Tarpaulin Sky Press.