Janna Malamud Smith

Who is Janna Malamud Smith?

Janna Malamud Smith is an American non-fiction author of four books. She was born in Corvallis, Oregon in 1952, the second of two children born to Ann DeChiara Malamud and the writer Bernard Malamud. She grew up in Oregon, then in Bennington, Vermont, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She received her A.B. from Harvard University in 1973, majoring in American History and Literature, and an M.S.W. in 1979 from Smith College. She practices and teaches psychotherapy in the Boston area. She is married to David Smith, and is the mother of two children.

Smith has lectured widely, and has published nationally and internationally in many newspapers, magazines and journals. She is the author of four books. The first two, Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life and A Potent Spell: Mother Love and the Power of Fear were both chosen as “Notable Books” by The New York Times Sunday Book Review. Her third, My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud received a “starred” review from Publisher’s Weekly, was selected as a Washington Post “Best Book of the Year”, and a New York Times “Editors’ Choice”. Smith has had essays republished in Best American Essays in 2004 and 2009. She is a Lecturer in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, and was on the editorial board of The Harvard Mental Health Letter until it ceased publication in 2012. As well as teaching about psychotherapy, she teaches workshops in aspects of non-fiction writing.