Rachel Cusk

Childhood and education

Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and spent much of her early childhood in Los Angeles. She moved to the United Kingdom in 1974. She reads English at New College, Oxford.

Career

Cusk is the author of eight novels and three works of non-fiction. She has won and been shortlisted for numerous prizes: her 2014 novel, Outline, was shortlisted for the Folio Prize, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Baileys prize. In 2003, Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'.

Reviewing Cusk's novel Outline in the New York Times, Heidi Julavits writes: "While the narrator is rarely alone, reading Outline mimics the sensation of being underwater, of being separated from other people by a substance denser than air. But there is nothing blurry or muted about Cusk’s literary vision or her prose: Spend much time with this novel and you’ll become convinced she is one of the smartest writers alive."

Reviewing her most recent novel, Transit, critic Helen Dunmore of The Guardian noted Cusk's "brilliant, insightful prose", adding, "Cusk is now working on a level that makes it very surprising that she has not yet won a major literary prize".

In the New York Times review of Transit, Dwight Garner says the novel offers "transcendental reflections", and that he is waiting more eagerly for the last novel of Rachel Cusk's trilogy (entitled Kudos, and has Outline and Transit as its first two books) than for that of Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series.

Personal life

Cusk is married to the artist Siemon Scamell-Katz and lives in London and Norfolk with her two daughters.