Claire Messud

Each spring semester, beginning 2009, Messud teaches a literary traditions course as a part of CUNY Hunter College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. She has two children, Livia and Lucian.

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. As of 2010–2011, she is a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Institute of Advanced Study.

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. The Emperor’s Children, which Messud wrote while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004–2005, was critically praised and became a New York Times bestseller, as well as being longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. In April 2013, Messud published her sixth novel, The Woman Upstairs.

Claire Messud (born 1966) is an American novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor’s Children (2006).