Cynthia Lee Macdonald (February 2, 1928 – August 3, 2015) was an American poet, educator, and psychoanalyst.[1]
Life
Macdonald was born in Manhattan to screenwriter Leonard Lee and his wife Dorothy Kiam.[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]
