Claire Messud
| Claire Messud | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1966 Greenwich, Connecticut |
| Occupation | Novelist, teacher |
| Nationality | American |
Claire Messud (born 1966) is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the 2006 novel The Emperor's Children.
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Early life [edit]
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, and her father is French from French Algeria (Algeria was a French colony until 1962). She was educated at the University of Toronto Schools,[3] Milton Academy, Yale University, and Cambridge University, where she met her spouse, the British literary critic James Wood.[4] Messud also briefly attended the MFA program at Syracuse University.
Career [edit]
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.[1] The Emperor’s Children, which Messud wrote while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004–2005,[5] became a New York Times bestseller and was longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.
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.[6] She has contributed articles to publications such as The New York Review of Books.[7]
Each spring semester, beginning 2009, Messud teaches a literary traditions course as a part of CUNY Hunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing.[8]
The Woman Upstairs caused Annasue McCleave Wilson to suggest she "wouldn't want to be friends" with the novel's protaganist, whose outlook she described "almost unbearably grim." Messud responded:
| “ | For heaven's sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in The Corrections? Any of the characters in Infinite Jest? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter?[9] | ” |
Awards [edit]
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.[10] As of 2010–2011, she is a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Institute of Advanced Study.
Bibliography [edit]
Novels [edit]
- When the World Was Steady (1995)
- The Last Life (1999)
- The Hunters: Two Short Novels (2001)
- The Emperor's Children (2006)
- The Woman Upstairs (2013)
Notes [edit]
- ^ a b van Gelder, Lawrence. "Footlights", The New York Times, January 2, 2003 Section E, p. 1
- ^ Dennis Lythgoe, "Author's cultural diversity enriches her fiction writing," The Deseret News, October 1, 2006.
- ^ Katrina Onstad, "Bestselling novelist Claire Messud returns with The Woman Upstairs," Toronto Life, March 2013
- ^ Mokoto Rich, "For Claire Messud, Good Reviews and Now, Finally, Good Sales," The New York Times, September 6, 2006.
- ^ Claire Messud profile, 2004–2005 Radcliffe Institute Fellows, Harvard University, accessed April 9, 2012
- ^ http://www.thecommononline.org/about
- ^ Messud, Claire. "The Wizard of West Fifty-seventh Street", The Paris Review Daily, March 29, 2012
- ^ Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing
- ^ "Are you reading novels to make new friends?". The Guardian. 3 May 2013. Retrieved 3 May 2013.
- ^ Bedell, Geraldine. "Granta's grotto", The Guardian, January 4, 2003, accessed April 9, 2012
References [edit]
- "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 [edit]
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Claire Messud |
- 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
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- 1966 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American novelists
- 21st-century American novelists
- American women novelists
- American people of Algerian descent
- American people of Canadian descent
- Milton Academy alumni
- Yale University alumni
- People from Greenwich, Connecticut
- University of Maryland, College Park faculty
- Kenyon College faculty
- Amherst College faculty
- Johns Hopkins University faculty
