Cynthia Macdonald

Macdonald was born in Manhattan to screenwriter Leonard Macdonald and his wife Dorothy Kiam Macdonald.[2]

She earned a B.A. in English from Bennington College in 1950 and pursued studies in voice at the Mannes School of Music in 1951-1952.[3] She pursued a career in opera and concert singing from 1953-1966.[4] After changing her focus to poetry, Macdonald received a master's degree in writing and literature from Sarah Lawrence College.[5]

She went on to teach creative writing at Sarah Lawrence University and Johns Hopkins University.[6] She co-founded the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston with fellow poet Stanley Plumly in 1979. She was a member of the English Department at the University of Houston until her retirement in 2004,[7] receiving the Esther Farfel Award for faculty excellence.

Macdonald also worked as a psychoanalyst, having received a certification from the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute in 1986. She specialized in working with people who had writer's block.[8]

She was a member of the board of directors of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.[9]

She wrote the libretto for The Rehearsal (1978), an opera by Thomas Benjamin.

She was the mother of American artist Jennifer Macdonald.

• Three NEA grants (two for poetry and one for a libretto) [10][11]
• Guggenheim Fellowship [12]
• National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters award "for "recognition of the contribution of her poetry", 1977[13]
• O. B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize[14]

• "Discomfiting the Absolute Splendor", Poetry Foundation
• "The Impossible May Be Possible", Ploughshares (Spring 1999)

• Daniel Bourne (March 30, 1990). "A Conversation With Cynthia Macdonald". Artful Dodge. Archived from the original on September 27, 2008.
• "Cynthia Macdonald." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 18 Nov. 2009