Claire Messud

Claire Messud
Occupation	Novelist, teacher
Nationality	American

Claire Messud (born 1966) is an American novelist. She is best known as the author of the 2006 novel The Emperor's Children.

Early life

Born in Greenwich, Connecticut,^[1] Messud grew up in the United States, Australia, and Canada, returning to the United States as a teenager.^[2] Messud's mother is Canadian, her father of French origin (from formerly French Algeria). She was educated at Milton Academy, Yale University, and Cambridge, where she met her spouse, the British literary critic James Wood.^[3] Messud also briefly attended the MFA program at Syracuse University.

Career

Messud's debut novel, When The World Was Steady (1995), was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. In 1999, she published her second book, The Last Life, about three generations of a French-Algerian family. Her 2001 work, The Hunters, consists of two novellas. Her most recent novel, The Emperor’s Children, was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Messud wrote the novel while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004-2005.^[4]

Messud has taught creative writing at Kenyon College, University of Maryland, Amherst College, in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in North Carolina, and in the Graduate Writing program at The Johns Hopkins University. Messud also taught at the Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. She is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.^[5]

Each spring semester, beginning 2009, Messud teaches a literary traditions course as a part of CUNY Hunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing.^[6]

Honors

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has recognized Messud's talent with both an Addison Metcalf Award and a Strauss Living Award. She was considered for the 2003 Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, although none of the three passports she holds is British.^[7] As of 2010-2011, she is a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Institute of Advanced Study.

Notes

1. ^ The New York Times, January 2, 2003 Thursday, Section E; Column 1; The Arts/Cultural Desk; Pg. 1, "Footlights," by Lawrence van Gelder ("Ms. Messud, born in Greenwich, Conn., in 1966, is the author of the novels 'When the World Was Steady' (1994) and 'The Last Life' (1999), among other works.')
2. ^ Dennis Lythgoe, "Author's cultural diversity enriches her fiction writing," The Deseret News, October 1, 2006.
3. ^ Mokoto Rich, "For Claire Messud, Good Reviews and Now, Finally, Good Sales," The New York Times, September 6, 2006.
4. ^ [1]
5. ^ http://www.thecommononline.org/about
6. ^ Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing
7. ^ [2]

References

• "Granta’s grotto" by Geraldine Bedell, The Observer, January 5, 2003, retrieved August 27, 2006
• "Here’s another fine Messud" by Gaby Wood, The Observer, August 20, 2006, retrieved August 27, 2006
• "The Emperor's Children", at Metacritic.com

External links

• Claire Messud essay on women as authors of ficton, in Guernica
• Messud article archive and author page from The New York Review of Books
• Deseret News profile of Claire Messud

Persondata
Name	Messud, Claire
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Date of birth	1966
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