Rachel Cusk was born in Canada in 1967 and spent much of her childhood in Los Angeles before attending a convent school in England. She studied English at New College, Oxford, and has travelled extensively in Spain and Central America.

She is the author of several novels. The first, Saving Agnes (1993), won the Whitbread First Novel Award. A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001), is a study of motherhood. In The Lucky Ones (2003), she uses a series of five narratives, loosely knotted together by the experience of parenthood, to explore life's changes; what separates us from those we love, and what connects us to those we no longer relate to. She lives on Exmoor with her family.