Susan Musgrave | |
|---|---|
| Born | March 12, 1951 |
| Occupations | Author, poet |
| Spouse | |
| Writing career | |
| Genres | Poetry, fiction, non fiction, children's literature |
Susan Musgrave (born March 12, 1951) is a Canadian poet novelist, essayist, editor, cookbook writer and children's writer. She was born in Santa Cruz, California, to Canadian parents, and lives in British Columbia and spends part of every year in the west of Ireland where she lived in the early 70s. Her roots are Anglo-Irish; her great-great-great grandfather, Sir Richard Musgrave, wrote “Memoirs of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
Musgrave left school at 14, and had her first works published at 16. In 1986, at a wedding held in prison, she married Stephen Reid, a writer, convicted bank robber and former member of the infamous Stopwatch Gang. Their relationship was chronicled in 1999 in the CBC Life and Times series, The Poet and the Bandit.
She has two daughters, Charlotte Nelson Musgrave (with Paul Oscar Nelson) and Sophie Musgrave Reid (with Stephen Reid). Sophie Musgrave Reid died in 2021 of a Fentanyl overdose.
She teaches poetry at the University of British Columbia's School of Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts program.
Musgrave's archives are held by the William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections at McMaster University.
Her book Exculpatory Lilies was shortlisted for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize as well as the Governor General’s Award for Poetry, and the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize.
