Eating Disorders: Claire Messud

Saturday 10 November 2012

Claire Messud

Claire Messud was born in the United States in 1966 to a French father and a Canadian mother. She was raised in Sydney, Australia and Toronto, Canada, before returning to the States in 1980. Educated at Yale and Cambridge universities, Messud lived in London until 1995, where she was Deputy Editor of the Guardian newspaper’s Women’s Page. Claire has taught at various colleges and universities, including Amherst College and Kenyon College, and in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College. 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. Messud grew up in the United States, Australia, and Canada, returning to the United States as a teenager. Messud's mother is Canadian, and her father is Algerian (Algeria was under French colonialization until 1962). She was educated at Milton Academy, Yale University, and Cambridge University, where she met her spouse, the British literary critic James Wood. Messud also briefly attended the MFA program at Syracuse University