Edith Maxwell (author)
Edith Maxwell (born 1952) is an Agatha Award-winning American mystery author also currently writing as Maddie Day. She writes cozy, traditional, and historical mysteries set in the United States. Biography. Maxwell was born in Pasadena and grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Temple City with two older sisters and a younger brother. Her father taught high school and her mother was a Girl Scout leader and a real estate appraiser. Maxwell was an exchange student with AFS Intercultural Programs in Brazil for a year in 1970. She holds a BA (linguistics, 1974) from University  of California, Irvine, and a PhD (linguistics, 1981) from Indiana University. Prior to writing fiction full time, she worked as an auto mechanic, taught conversational English in Japan and independent childbirth classes in Massachusetts, owned and operated a small certified-organic farm, wrote free-lance articles, and most recently produced software documentation for several hi-tech companies in the Boston area. Besides Brazil and Japan she has also lived in Mali and Burkina Faso. Authorial career. Maxwell’s first published fiction was in the Pasadena Star-News, where she won a children’s fiction contest in 1961. Her first published  short story as an adult was in 1996, and her first novel appeared in 2012. She is a lifetime member of Sisters in Crime and served as President of the New England chapter for two years. She is also a member of Mystery Writers of America, the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and the Historical Novel Society. She has been a full-time mystery author since 2013. Maxwell has two dozen mystery novels and a novella in print with more in process. Maxwell decided to write cozy mysteries because "I don’t want to read noir or nail-biter thrillers. Our  world is scary and messy enough. When I’m finished reading a book, I don’t want to feel worse about society. That’s what I write, too."