12 Facts About Claire Messud

Claire Messud is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children.

Claire Messud's mother is Canadian, and her father is a Pied-noir from French Algeria.

Claire Messud was educated at the University of Toronto Schools and Milton Academy.

Claire Messud did undergraduate and graduate studies at Yale University and Cambridge University, where she met her spouse James Wood.

Claire Messud has taught creative writing at Amherst College, Kenyon College, University of Maryland, Yale University, in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers in North Carolina, and in the Graduate Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.

Claire Messud taught at Sewanee: The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Claire Messud is on the editorial board of the literary magazine The Common, based at Amherst College.

Claire Messud has contributed articles to publications such as The New York Review of Books.

In 2009, Claire Messud began teaching a literary traditions course each spring semester as a part of CUNY Hunter College's MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Claire Messud subsequently taught creative writing at other schools, including the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University.

Since 2015, Claire Messud has been a senior lecturer of the English Department at Harvard University, where she is part of the Creative Writing faculty.

Claire Messud was considered for the 2003 Granta Best of Young British Novelists list, although none of the three passports she holds is British.