Margot Livesey is a highly acclaimed literature and fiction author, best known for her New York Times bestselling novels. She was born in Scotland and brought up in a private boys' school in the Scottish Highlands, where her father taught and her mother, Eva, was the school nurse. Growing up in this environment had a significant impact on Livesey's life and influenced her writing career.
After completing her B.A. in English and philosophy at the University of York in England, Livesey spent most of her twenties working in restaurants and learning to write. Her first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published in Canada in 1986. Since then, Livesey has published ten novels, including Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona, The House on Fortune Street, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury, and The Boy in the Field. Her eleventh novel, The Road from Belhaven, is set to be published by Knopf in February 2024. Livesey has also published a collection of essays on writing called The Hidden Machinery.
In addition to her writing career, Livesey has taught at several prestigious institutions, including Boston University, Bowdoin College, Brandeis University, Carnegie Mellon, Cleveland State, Emerson College, Tufts University, the University of California at Irvine, the Warren Wilson College MFA program for writers, and Williams College. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, the N.E.A., the Massachusetts Artists' Foundation, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Currently, Livesey teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.