Canned Bio

Maud Newton was born in Dallas, Texas, to southern parents. At two, she moved to Miami, Florida, where she was often mistaken for a tourist because of her pallid complexion.

She attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she studied writing with Padgett Powell and Harry Crews. Then, for lack of a better plan, she blundered into law school, also at U.F. After accruing a bundle of loans to finance her legal education, Maud confirmed what she had suspected all along: she did not want to be an attorney. She practiced law in Florida for a few years anyway.

Now she lives in New York City, where she works as an editor and writer. In her free time, she writes, reads, and blogs -- and sends checks to the U.S. Department of Education.


Maud started blogging in May 2002 with the aim of meeting others who were passionate about books, culture, and politics. Since then, her site has been praised, criticized, and quoted in The New York Times Book Review, Forbes, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New York Times, the UK Telegraph, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, Poets & Writers Magazine, The Guardian, the San Francisco Chronicle, The New Yorker, Book Magazine, London's Evening Standard, The Scotsman, Slate, the Denver Post, Canada's National Post, and many other publications. For her thoughts on blogging, see Gordon Hurd's October 2007 interview for Yahoo! Picks.

Maud is a contributor to NPR's Books We Like. She has written about books, writers, and culture for the New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Granta, The American Prospect, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, The Second Pass, and Newsday.

An excerpt from her novel-in-progress appeared in the spring issue of Narrative. Her Portrait of My Father, a brief personal reflection inspired by a photograph, recently appeared at Granta online. Conversations You Have at Twenty, a longer personal essay, won second prize in Narrative's 2008 Love Story Contest, and is forthcoming in Plume's Love is a Four-Letter Word (for which the essay has received positive early mentions from Publishers Weekly and Kirkus).

In 2004, Maud won City College's Irwin and Alice Stark Short Fiction Prize for Regarding the Insurance Defense Attorney, which was published in Lee Klein's Eyeshot. Her fiction and nonfiction have also appeared in Swink, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Maisonneuve, Story South, and Pindeldyboz, and in the anthologies When I Was a Loser and What We Do Now.

Currently she serves on the Buzz Board for The Daily Beast and the Board of Directors for Girls Write Now, and has previously served on the advisory board for Very Short List. She has appeared on BookTV, Talk of the Nation, Radio Open Source, and other programs and has written for IFC.com and the Best Week Ever blog.


Maud likes to hear from readers. An overflowing inbox and a pathological tendency toward disorganization prevent her from responding to every message. You can also follow her on Twitter: @maudnewton.

Lineaments and Penetralia

Height: No.

Music: Yes.

The glass: Half empty.

Politics: Commonly (and unabashedly) left.

Hair color: Highly variable.

Eyes: Somewhat protuberant due to a bout with hyperthyroidism in the mid '90s.

Partner: Some guy I first met in 9th grade English class.

Children: Step-daughter, 15, who lives in Florida.

Current pets: Two cats, Emily and Percy, both female. (For Dickinson and Walker.)

Late pets: Ripley, a Rottweiler who had liver cancer. Prior, childhood pets, too numerous to recount here.

Birds in captivity: Should be set free. (Or kept far away from me.)

The South: Love/hate.

New York: Love/hate.

Novel: Excerpted, but still in progress.

Day job: Editor and writer in legal publishing.

Past jobs: Winn Dixie cashier. J Byrons lingerie sales. Gap drone. Textbook stocker. Research assistant. Tax attorney.

Sign: Gemini. Sagittarius rising, Aries moon.

Cards: Everything, but especially poker.

Cigarettes: Occasional Forsaken.

Font: Courier.