KERRI MAHER

My first novel, The Kennedy Debutante, came out in 2018, and my second in 2020: The Girl In White Gloves: A Novel of Grace Kelly. My third, The Paris Bookseller, about trailblazing entrepreneur Sylvia Beach and the original Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris, came out this year. I’m proud to say it spent four weeks on the Indie Bestseller List, and got some great buzz!  I’ll also have another historical novel coming your way from Berkley in 2023, a fact that makes me feel incredibly lucky and grateful after spending so many years (and years!) writing and working on the craft.  If you want to know more about those years, check out my memoir This Is Not a Writing Manual: Notes for the Young Writer in the Real World (Writer’s Digest Books) under the name Kerri Majors. I am also the founder of an award-winning journal of YA literature, YARN.

I’ve lived on both coasts, and currently call Massachusetts home.  I live near Boston, and love all the museums and long, leafy walks this part of the world provides, but if you ask me where I’m from, I’ll always say California. Here’s a bit more information about me, but really—if you want to know more, the best place to look is my book, This is Not a Writing Manual, since it’s a memoir of my writing life, starting in middle school. There are loads of stories in there about me and writing, like how much I learned from eavesdropping and watching soap operas, how I was inspired by SARK and Dead Poets Society, and how I used to hate my writer friends who were more successful that I was (don’t worry, I learned to get over that—and myself). Of course I tell you how I came to get published, and start YARN, my award-winning YA literary journal.

So I won’t bore you with all of that here.

What I will tell you here is that, I live in Massachusetts just west of Boston but I’ll always identify myself as a California girl because my parents are native Californians and live there still, and I spent the formative years of sixth grade through college in the state.  But the truth is, I’ve actually lived more of my life on the East Coast, which is still partly my parents’ fault for living the first eight years of my life in Dover, MA. I also lived for six years in Brooklyn, NY, where I ate really well, and cheaply, and shopped at awesome thrift shops (sigh; I still miss it sometimes). During those New York years, I also got my MFA at Columbia, and my first teaching gig as a grad student instructor in the Undergraduate Writing Program there.  I taught writing for eight years, starting as a grad student, then as a lecturer at Fairleigh Dickinson University in NJ, before moving to MA and having a baby and changing my life yet again.

These days, I write full time and hang with my daughter Elena.  Together, we love taking advantage of everything the Boston area has to offer–trips to the Museum of Fine Arts, apple picking, traipsing around the Boston Common, and soaking up the history in Concord and Sturbridge Village.  I also love to cook and eat, so you’ll likely see a sprinkling of delicious dishes in my Instagram feed!

I look forward to getting to know you better at live events and on social media.  Thanks again for stopping by.

–Kerri