Claire Messud (born October 8, 1966) is an American/Canadian/French novelist and literature and creative writing professor.

However, she soon felt that that endeavor was not a good fit for her aspirations, as all the other students, in addition to being older, and "already married and sometimes getting divorced", were heavily interested in American authors whose work she was not yet familiar with, such as Charles Baxter, Leonard Michaels, and Ann Beattie.

Messud's literary tastes were steeped more toward the experimental female authors with whom her mother had raised her, such as Katherine Mansfield, Djuna Barnes, Elizabeth Bowen, and Jean Rhys.

[1] The Emperor's Children, which Messud wrote while a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in 2004–2005,[6] was critically praised and became a New York Times bestseller, as well as being longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.

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

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