Claire Messud | |
|---|---|
 Messud at the 2024Texas Book Festival | |
| Born | (1966-10-08)October 8, 1966 (age 59) Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist, teacher |
| Spouse | James Wood |
| Website | |
| www | |
Claire Messud (born October 8, 1966) is an American/Canadian/Frenchnovelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novelThe Emperor's Children (2006).
Born inGreenwich, Connecticut,[1] Messud grew up in Australia and Canada, spending two years in boarding school in the United States as a teenager.[2] Messud's mother is Canadian, and her father is aPied-noir fromFrench Algeria. She was educated at theUniversity of Toronto Schools[3] andMilton Academy. She did undergraduate and graduate studies atYale University andCambridge University, where she met her husbandJames Wood.[4]
In 1989, after her two years at Cambridge ended, Messud entered the M.F.A. program atSyracuse University. However, she soon felt that that endeavor was not a good fit for her aspirations, as all the other students, in addition to being older, and "already married and sometimes getting divorced", were heavily interested in American authors whose work she was not yet familiar with, such asCharles Baxter,Leonard Michaels, andAnn Beattie. Messud's literary tastes were more towards the experimental women authors with whom her mother had raised her, such asKatherine Mansfield,Djuna Barnes,Elizabeth Bowen, andJean Rhys.[5]
Messud's debut novel,When The World Was Steady (1995), was nominated for thePEN/Faulkner Award. In 1999, she published her second book,The Last Life, about three generations of aFrench-Algerian family. Her 2001 work,The Hunters, consists of two novellas.[1]The Emperor's Children, which Messud wrote while a fellow at theRadcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004–2005,[6] was critically praised and became aNew York Times bestseller, as well as being longlisted for the 2006Man Booker Prize. In April 2013, Messud published her sixth novel,The Woman Upstairs. Her 2017 novel,The Burning Girl, was named one of the best books of the year by theLos Angeles Times.[7]
Messud has taught creative writing atAmherst College,Kenyon College,University of Maryland,Yale University, in theWarren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers inNorth Carolina, and in the Graduate Writing program atJohns Hopkins University. Messud also taught atSewanee: The University of the South inSewanee, Tennessee. She is on the editorial board of the literary magazineThe Common, based atAmherst College.[8] She has contributed articles to publications such asThe New York Review of Books.[9]
In 2009, Messud began teaching a literary traditions course each spring semester as a part ofCUNYHunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing. She subsequently taught creative writing at other schools, including theUniversity of Maryland andJohns Hopkins University.[10]
Since 2015, Messud has been a senior lecturer of the English Department atHarvard University, where she is part of the Creative Writing faculty.[11][12]
Messud has two children.[13][5]
TheAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters has recognized Messud's talent with both anAddison Metcalf Award and aStrauss Living Award. She was considered for the 2003Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, although none of the three passports she holds is British.[14] As of 2010–2011, she is a fellow at theWissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Institute of Advanced Study.[citation needed]
This Strange Eventful History was longlisted for the 2024Giller Prize.[15] It was also longlisted for the2024 Booker Prize.[16]
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