Rachel Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and spent much of her childhood in Los Angeles before finishing her education at St Mary's Convent in Cambridge. She read English at New College, Oxford, and has travelled extensively in Spain and Central America. She is the author of six novels. The first, Saving Agnes (1993) won the Whitbread First Novel Award. A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001) is a personal exploration of motherhood. In The Lucky Ones (2003) she uses a series of five narratives, loosely linked by the experience of parenthood, to write of life's transformations, of what separates us from those we love and what binds us to those we no longer understand.

In 2003 Rachel Cusk was nominated by Granta magazine as one of 20 'Best of Young British Novelists'. Her latest novel is The Bradshaw Variations (2009).

Cusk is married to the photographer Adrian Clarke. She has two daughters, Albertine and Jessye.

Selected bibliography

• Saving Agnes (1993)
• The Temporary (1995)
• The Country Life (1997)
• A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001)
• The Lucky Ones (2003)
• In the Fold (2005)
• Arlington Park (2006)
• The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy (2009)
• The Bradshaw Variations (2009)

Awards and Prizes

• 1993 Whitbread First Novel Award Saving Agnes
• 1997 Somerset Maugham Award The Country Life
• 2003 Whitbread Novel Award (shortlist) The Lucky Ones
• 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction (shortlist) Arlington Park

"Suburban Worlds: Rachel Cusk and Jon McGregor." In B. Schoene. The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh University Press, 2009.