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.While she grew up in Miami, Maud spent childhood summers with grandparents in Dallas and on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
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 has always known: that she did not want to be an attorney. She practiced law in Florida for a few years anyway.
These days Maud lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York, and works as an editor in Manhattan. Her blog 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. In October 2007, the site was a Yahoo! Pick.
Maud has written for The American Prospect. She has contributed book reviews to the New York Times Book Review, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, and Newsday.
Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Swink, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Eyeshot, Maisonneuve, Story South, Pindeldyboz, and other publications. Her essays have been anthologized in When I was a Loser and What We Do Now. Currently she serves on the advisory board for Very Short List.
She has appeared on BookTV, Talk of the Nation, and Radio Open Source, and has written for the Best Week Ever blog. At BookExpo 2007, she interviewed Shalom Auslander about his forthcoming memoir, Beware of God.
Maud likes to hear from readers. An overflowing inbox, and a pathological tendency toward disorganization, prevent her from responding to every message.
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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, 13, a full head taller than me, and a resident of 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. (See comment about childhood pets, above.)
The South: Love/hate.
New York: Love/hate.
Novel: Still in progress.
Current job: Not as glamorous as the word "editor" might suggest.
Past jobs: Tax attorney. Research assistant. Textbook stocker. Gap drone. J Byrons lingerie sales. Winn Dixie cashier. (In reverse order.)
Sign: Gemini. Sagittarius rising, Aries moon.
Cards: Everything, but especially poker.
Cigarettes:
Font: Courier.
