Cynthia Macdonald

Cynthia Lee Macdonald (February 2, 1928 – August 3, 2015) was an American poet, educator, and psychoanalyst.

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

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. She pursued a career in opera and concert singing from 1953-1966. After changing her focus to poetry, Macdonald received a master's degree in writing and literature from Sarah Lawrence College.

She went on to teach creative writing at Sarah Lawrence University and Johns Hopkins University. 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, 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.

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

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

She was the mother of American artist Jennifer Macdonald.

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