Biography
Janna Malamud Smith is a writer and psychotherapist. She is the author of five books, Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life (1997), A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear (2003), My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud (2006), An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery, and When the Island Had Fish: The Remarkable Story of a Maine Fishing Community. Her articles and essays have appeared nationally and internationally in newspapers, magazines and literary journals including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The International Herald Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, American Scholar, Family Circle and The Threepenny Review. Ms. Smith was born in Corvallis, Oregon, and, after moving east as a nine-year-old, lived briefly in Vermont before settling in the Boston area. She studied American History and Literature in college, and then pursued a graduate degree in clinical social work. She is mostly retired from clinical practice but still does some clinical consultation. She is married, and the mother of two children.