Maud Newton is a writer, editor, and teacher whose past offerings have focused on writing about ancestor trouble and the family histories we tell ourselves we can't tell. Her book, Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation, was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, NPR, the Washington Post, Time, Esquire, Garden & Gun, and Entertainment Weekly, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, a Roxane Gay Book Club pick, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize for a first book in any genre.
Maud's recent bylines include the Washington Post, Slate, the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Esquire, the Wall Street Journal, Time, and Harper’s Bazaar. Maud has discussed her own family history, understandings of intergenerational trauma, and the importance of individuals acknowledging ancestors’ complicity in larger cultural harms, with NPR’s All Things Considered, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, WNYC, and UC Davis Jewish Studies/Religious Studies. In addition to nonfiction, Maud writes fiction and cultural criticism. She received the Narrative Prize and City College’s Irwin and Alice Stark Short Fiction Prize, both for fiction.