News & Media
Esquire’s Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2022
Esquire calls Ancestor Trouble “riveting” and praises the book’s blend of memoir and cultural criticism.
Oprah Daily’s 50 Most Anticipated Books of 2022
Oprah Daily includes Ancestor Trouble on their list of books most anticipated in the year to come—at #5. “[A] powerful debut,” they say.
BookPage’s Most Anticipated Books of 2022
“We suspect that the hype for this one is real, and then some,” BookPage says.
Time’s 21 Most Anticipated Books of 2022
Ancestor Trouble made TIME’s list of the twenty-one most anticipated books of 2022.
Interviewed at Bitter Southerner’s Salvation South Project
Carolyn Kellogg interviewed Maud about Ancestor Trouble.
The Millions’ 2022 Preview
“An unflinching exploration into the history of a troubled family tree and the universal but also peculiarly American need to discover ‘roots,’” The Millions calls Ancestor Trouble.
Starred Review from Kirkus
In a starred review of Ancestor Trouble, Kirkus says “the current wave of interest in genealogy, heredity, family history, and responsibility for past injustices crescendos in a comprehensive work combining personal narrative and reporting,” and calls the book “Exhaustively researched, engagingly presented, and glowing with intelligence and honesty.”
Literary Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2022
Literary Hub includes Ancestor Trouble among the site’s most-anticipated, and Eliza Smith calls the book an “intricately researched account of the most universal subject.”
Goodreads Members’ Most Anticipated Books of 2022
Ancestor Trouble is listed as one of Goodreads members’ most anticipated books of 2022.
Literary Hub’s Books Writers Loved in 2021
For Literary Hub, Alexander Chee writes, “at this very moment, I’m riveted by Maud Newton’s forthcoming nonfiction book Ancestor Trouble, on what she discovered about white supremacy while examining her family’s legends.” On Twitter he later compared the book to “following a lit fuse through the dark.”
Publishers Weekly Review
An admiring Publishers Weekly review of Ancestor Trouble says, “Newton debuts with a masterful mix of memoir and cultural criticism that wrestles with America’s ancestry through her own family’s complex past. . . . The result is a transfixing meditation on the inextricable ways the past informs the present.”
Publishers Weekly Feature
In an Open Book installment for Publishers Weekly, featuring Maud, her agent Julie Barer, and her editor Andrea Walker, Louisa Ermelino calls Ancestor Trouble “a marvel: absorbing, addictive, informative.”
Advance Praise in Boston Globe
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis offered praise for Ancestor Trouble in The Boston Globe while in the process of reading a galley of the book. “Fantastic…. well researched, well written, and juicy,” she called it. “I love a good juicy historical book.”
Bookforum Notice
Thanks to Bookforum for noting the upcoming publication of Ancestor Trouble (next March).
Cover Reveal
Lit Hub unveiled the cover of Ancestor Trouble (March 29, 2022), along with some insights from designer Rachel Ake and from Maud.
New Website
Thank you to Lorissa Shepstone and the rest of the Being Wicked team for a gorgeous new website, the first complete redesign since 2002.
Prior Media
In the past, Maud’s essays and fiction have been praised by the New York Times, the New Yorker online, Elle, Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, the Paris Review online, and others.