Margot Livesey
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Margot Livesey (born 1953) is a Scottish-born writer. She is the author of nine novels, a collection of short stories, a collection of essays on writing and the co-author, with Lynn Klamkin, of a textbook. Among other awards, she has earned a Guggenheim Fellowship, a
National Endowment for the Arts The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
Fellowship, the PEN New England Award, and the
Massachusetts Book Award Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
. Livesey's stories and essays have appeared in ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'', ''
The Atlantic Monthly ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'', and a number of literary quarterlies. She was formerly the fiction editor at ''
Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Bos ...
'', an American literary journal. Livesey served as a judge for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction in 2012. She currently divides her time between
Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston ...
, and
Iowa City, Iowa Iowa City, offically the City of Iowa City is a city in Johnson County, Iowa, United States. It is the home of the University of Iowa and county seat of Johnson County, at the center of the Iowa City Metropolitan Statistical Area. At the tim ...
, where she is a member of the faculty at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has also taught at
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...
, Bowdoin College,
Brandeis University , mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts" , established = , type = Private research university , accreditation = NECHE , president = Ronald D. Liebowitz , ...
, Carnegie Mellon University, Cleveland State University, Emerson College,
Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
, the
Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers Warren Wilson College (WWC) is a private liberal arts college in Swannanoa, North Carolina. It is known for its curriculum that combines academics, work, and service as every student must complete a requisite course of study, work an on-campus j ...
, and
Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kill ...
.Contemporary Authors She has frequently been a faculty member at the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers’ conferences, among other conferences.


Early life

Livesey was raised on the grounds of what was then a Scottish private boys' school,
Glenalmond College Glenalmond College is a co-educational independent boarding school in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, for children aged between 12 and 18 years. It is situated on the River Almond near the village of Methven, about west of the city of Perth. ...
, approximately 50 miles north of
Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
. Her father, John Kenneth Livesey, was a teacher at the school, while her mother, Eva Barbara (McEwen) Livesey, was a nurse. Her mother died when Livesey was two years old and her father remarried. After earning a Bachelors of Arts at the University of York, where she read philosophy and English, Livesey began to spend time in Toronto where she waitressed to support herself as she pursued writing fiction. Her first fiction publication was a short story, "Someone Else's," in ''Prism International'' in 1976.


Career

In 1983, Livesey joined the faculty at
Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...
and in 1986 published her first book, a collection of stories, which included nine short stories, and a novella, "Learning By Heart," which gave the volume its title. Her first novel, ''Homework'', appeared in 1990. The story of an Edinburgh book editor who enters a relationship with the father of a disturbed child, the novel was short listed for the W.H. Smith first novel in Canada award. Livesey has followed ''Homework'' with seven other novels to date, beginning with ''Criminals'' (1996), about a banker who finds an abandoned infant in a bus station restroom and ends up leaving the baby with his sister. Four years later (in 2000), she published ''The Missing World'', about a woman who loses her memory of the last three years and whose duplicitous former boyfriend exploits that loss to resume their relationship. ''The Missing World'' was followed a year later by ''Eva Moves the Furniture'' (2001), a novel that took Livesey twelve years to write, in part because it drew more closely on her own life than her previous works. She based the novel's eponymous protagonist on stories she had heard about her mother, Eva McEwen, and especially about her relationship with the supernatural. Like the real Eva, the fictional Eva loses her mother in childbirth. The loss brings her two unexpected companions: the spirits of a young girl and an older woman, who follow Eva through her life, influencing it, sometimes rearranging the furniture, and sometimes causing trouble. ''Banishing Verona'', Livesey's fourth novel, appeared in 2004. Told from alternating points of view, the novel centers on two characters—Zeke, a twenty-something house painter with Asperger's and Verona, a radio host in her late 30s. The two meet in the novel's opening pages, when Verona, single and seven months pregnant, shows up at the house where Zeke is working, claiming to be related to its owners who have left town. When Zeke returns the next morning, he discovers that Verona is gone; the two spend the rest of the novel trying to reconnect. In 2008, Livesey published ''The House on Fortune Street'', a novel constructed of four interwoven narratives: two centered on women, Abigail, an actress who owns the titular house, and Dara, a therapist who rents the downstairs apartment, and two on men: Abigail's academic boyfriend, Sean, who is working on his dissertation about John Keats, and Dara's estranged father, Cameron, a photographer who struggles with his feelings for young girls. Each character's section possesses what Livesey calls a "literary godparent," a writer whose work in some way influences the character's life: For Sean, it's Keats; for Abigail, it's
Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
; for Dara it's
Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She enlisted i ...
, and for Cameron, it's Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). Livesey's next novel, ''The Flight of Gemma Hardy'' (2012), again connects its main character to a literary figure, as Livesey set out to write a reimagining of
Charlotte Brontë Charlotte Brontë (, commonly ; 21 April 1816 – 31 March 1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She enlisted i ...
's ''
Jane Eyre ''Jane Eyre'' ( ; originally published as ''Jane Eyre: An Autobiography'') is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first ...
'', a novel that had influenced her since she encountered it as a young girl. Livesey set her novel in 1950s and 60s Scotland, and much of it echoes the story of Brontë's novel. Gemma, an orphan, is shunted off to do menial work at a school. Not long after she turns 18, she moves to the Orkney Islands to work as a governess and meets a wealthy man, Hugh Sinclair. The two seem to be moving toward marriage until Gemma learns a secret that causes her to feel betrayed. Livesey does not, however, follow ''Jane Eyre'' in every respect. In a notable departure from the original, Gemma's father is
Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
ic. Her quest to discover her heritage is a crucial part of the narrative. Livesey followed ''The Flight of Gemma Hardy'' with ''Mercury'' (2016), a novel about a couple struggling in a strained marriage. The first section is narrated by Donald, a Scotsman who has immigrated to the United States where he lives in Boston and works as an optometrist. Although his profession is to help others see more clearly, Donald struggles to see even some of the most obvious truths about his life. The second section is narrated by Viv who used to work in mutual funds and now works at a stable. There, she encounters a horse, Mercury, whom she considers "the most amazing horse he'dever seen." As she dreams about competing on Mercury, Viv begins to feel hopeful about her life again. When she fears that someone is trying to harm him, she acquires a gun, precipitating a traumatic event that changes the lives of her and her family. The year after ''Mercury'' appeared, Livesey published The ''Hidden Machinery'', a collection of essays about writing; many of the essays had begun as lectures she had given as a teacher at a university or at a writers’ conference. Livesey's ninth novel, ''The Boy in the Field'', was published in August 2020. At year's end, the ''New York Times'' cited it among its 100 Notable Books for the Year.


Awards and honors

*Massachusetts Book Award, 2018 *Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, 2012-3 *NEIBA Award, 2012 *2009 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, The House on Fortune Street *Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, 1997-8 *National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1986 *Canada Council for the Arts Fellowship, 1983


Bibliography

Short stories *''Learning by Heart'', 1986 Novels *''Homework'', 1990 *''Criminals'', 1996 *''The Missing World'', 2000 *''Eva Moves the Furniture'', 2001 *''Banishing Verona'', 2004 *''The House on Fortune Street'', 2008 *''The Flight of Gemma Hardy'', 2012 *''Mercury'', 2016 *''The Boy in the Field'', 2020 *''The Road from Belhaven'', (due in 2024) Essays *''The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing'', 2018


References


External links


Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Livesey, Margot 1953 births Living people American women writers Bowdoin College faculty Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty Carnegie Mellon University faculty