Lucy Marx was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts. She received her Bachelor’s in English from Harvard College. After graduating, she worked as a counselor at a group home for boys in Cambridge, a riveter at a parts factory in South Boston, and a teacher in the Vietnam-era Vets Upward Bound Program at UMass Boston.
After the birth of her two daughters, she went back to school to get her graduate degree in creative writing from Boston University. She taught writing in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing Program at MIT for many years. She lives in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston with her multi-generational family and dog.