Background

Ethnicity: Through their father's mother, Frieda Hughes and her brother are descendants of Nicholas Ferrar.

Frieda Hughes was born on April 1, 1960, in London, England, United Kingdom. She is the daughter of Ted Hughes, a British poet laureate, and Sylvia Plath, a poet, and author. Her mother committed suicide at age thirty when Frieda was three years old. Ted Hughes raised his daughter and son Nicholas with help from his sister, Olwyn, and his second wife, Carol. The children grew up in a thatched house in Devon where Hughes was surrounded by books.

Education

In 1988 Frieda Hughes received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (now Central Saint Martins).

Career

In 1988 Frienda Hughes moved to Perth, Western Australia, then moved to Wooroloo, a small town in Australia, to paint and write poetry. She had written poems since childhood, and her first published works were books for children. From 2006 to 2008 she wrote a weekly poetry column for The Times newspaper and in 2008 was chair judge for the Forward Prizes for Poetry and a judge for the National Poetry Competition. As a painter, Hughes held numerous group and solo exhibitions.

Achievements

• Frieda Hughes is best known for her poetry collection Wooroloo. Her poems have been published in The New Yorker, Tatler, The Spectator, Thumbscrew, The Paris Review, First Pressings, and The London Magazine among others. Her works were launched by literary critics.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Thing in the Sink

    (There's a strange thing lurking in Peter's bathroom! It l...)

    1992
  • Alternative Values: Poems & Paintings

    (Frieda Hughes's poems and paintings reflect her early yea...)

    2015
  • Out of the Ashes

    (Out of the Ashes brings together work from four collectio...)

    2018
  • Getting Rid of Aunt Edna

    (This book chronicles the adventures of Miranda, an appren...)

    1986
  • Forty-Five

    (Breaking forty-five years of near-silence on the subject ...)

    2006
  • Stonepicker and The Book of Mirrors

    (A new collection of unusually intimate poems by the highl...)

    2009
  • The Meal a Mile Long

    (With the help of the starving rats who share his dungeon,...)

    1989
  • Waxworks

    (New terrain is marked in Frieda Hughes's brilliant new co...)

    2003
  • The Book of Mirrors

    (The Book of Mirrors tries to let us see ourselves as we r...)

    2009
  • Wooroloo

    (Welcome to the meticulously observed world of Frieda Hugh...)

    1998
  • Stonepicker

    (This is a collection of poetry.)

    2001
  • The Tall Story

    (Mickey is always telling lies. Not just small ones, but g...)

    1997
  • Waldorf Sleeping Granny 1990

Interests

• painting

Connections

Frieda Hughes was married three times. Her first spouse was a farmworker Desmond Dawe. They were married from 1979 to 1982. Her second husband was real estate agent Clive Anderson. In 1996 she married Hungarian artist Laszlo Lukacs. They divorced in 2010 after a year-long separation. She has no children.

Father:

Ted Hughes

Mother:

Sylvia Plath

Brother:

Nicholas Hughes

Frieda Hughes's brother, Nicholas Hughes, died by suicide on 16 March 2009.

ex-spouse:

Desmond Dawe

ex-spouse:

Clive Anderson

ex-spouse:

Laszlo Lukacs

Stepmother:

Carol Orchard

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2000
• The official website of Frieda Hughes