Maria Hummel is a poet and novelist. Her books include Still Lives, a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine pick, a Book of the Month Club pick, and BBC Culture Best Book of 2018; Motherland, a San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year; and House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman Poetry Prize. Her next novel, Lesson in Red, appears in June 2021.
The winner of a Stegner Fellowship, Bread Loaf Fellowship, and Pushcart Prize, Hummel has been praised for fiction that is “savvy and lyrical” (Wall Street Journal) and “deeply affecting” (Los Angeles Times), and poetry that is “stunning… simple and deep, brimming with love and pain” (The Rumpus). Her other awards include a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize, the Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award, and fellowships to Squaw Valley Writers’ Conference and Vermont Studio Center.
Hummel worked for many years as an arts editor and journalist, and as a writer/editor for The Museum of Contemporary Art, experience that informed Still Lives and Lesson in Red. She also taught creative writing at Stanford University for close to a decade and is now an associate professor at the University of Vermont. She lives in Vermont with her husband and sons.
Recent books: