Frieda Hughes

Through their father's mother, Frieda and Nicholas are descendants of Nicholas Ferrar (1592–1637).

Frieda Rebecca Hughes (born 1 April 1960) is an English-Australian poet and painter.

She has published seven children's books, four poetry collections and one short story and has had many exhibitions.

Hughes was married to farmworker Desmond Dawe from 1979 to 1982.

Her second husband was real estate agent Clive Anderson.

Hughes is the daughter of Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist and poet Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1984 until his death in 1998.

Her mother was an American novelist and poet, and her father was the British poet laureate from 1984 until his death in 1998.

Her mother took her life when Frieda was almost three; her father died of a heart attack while being treated for cancer.

Hughes graduated from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, with a BA (Hons.) in 1988.

She moved to Perth, Western Australia in 1988, and later settled in Wooroloo, a small hamlet north of Perth, in 1991, where the Australian landscape became the basis of much of her painting.

She obtained dual Australian citizenship in 1992.

Her third marriage, in 1996, was to Hungarian artist Laszlo Lukacs; they divorced in 2010 after a year-long separation.

She has no children.

Hughes rescues, keeps, and paints owls.

Frieda currently lives near Abermule, Powys, Wales.

Hughes's poems have also been published in The New Yorker, Tatler, The Spectator, Thumbscrew, The Paris Review, First Pressings, The London Magazine, The Times, The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph among others.

In June 2002, she received an Invention and Innovation award from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts for her project Forty Years.

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.

Hughes' brother, Nicholas Hughes, took his life on 16 March 2009.

Hughes was born in London.

In February 2010 she was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3.

In October 2015 Hughes spoke for the first time about her father as part of the BBC Two documentary Ted Hughes: Stronger Than Death.

In April 2023 Hughes appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme Saturday Live speaking about her book George about her rescue of a magpie chick.

Hughes is the daughter of poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.