Stephanie Land

Stephanie Land (born September 1978) is an American author and public speaker.

In January 2008, Land broke up with her partner and moved to a homeless shelter with her then nine-month-old daughter.

Land and her eldest daughter occasionally lived in homeless shelters, transitional housing, and a camper in a driveway, before securing an apartment in low-income housing.

After six years of cleaning in Washington and Montana, she was eventually able to use student loans and Pell grants to move to earn a Bachelor of Arts in English and creative writing from the University of Montana in May 2014.

During her studies, she published her first public writing in the form of blog posts and local publications followed by Internet-based publications such as HuffPost and Vox.

Upon graduating from the University of Montana, Land ended her dependence on food stamps, started working as a freelance writer, and became a writing fellow with the Center for Community Change.

Land would later detail these experiences in the 2023 memoir Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education.

The book—an elaboration of an article Land wrote for Vox in 2015 —debuted at number three on The New York Times Best Seller list.

She is best known for writing Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive (2019), which was adapted to television miniseries Maid (2021) for Netflix.

Her second memoir, Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education (2023) explores the challenges of single parenting and poverty while attending college.

Land has also written several articles about maid service work, domestic abuse and poverty in the United States.

Land grew up between Washington and Anchorage, Alaska, in a middle class household.

A car accident at age 16 led to her being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition which was later exacerbated by her financial struggles.

In her late twenties, she lived in Port Townsend, Washington, where she had her first child and became a single mother who worked maid service jobs to support her family.

Although she did not grow up in poverty, she spent the next several years living below the poverty line and relied on several welfare programs to cover necessary expenses; this later inspired her writing on issues of poverty and public policy.

The first line of her debut book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive (2019) reads: "My daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter."

Land's first book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive was published by Hachette Books on January 22, 2019.

Barack Obama placed the book on his "Summer Reading List" of 2019 and actress Reese Witherspoon said she "loved this story about one woman surviving impossible circumstances."

The book received positive but mixed reviews.

In USA Today, Sharon Peters praised the book's honesty, writing that it fills the "with much candid detail about the frustrations with the limitations of programs she relied on. It is a picture of the soul-robbing grind through poverty that millions live with every day."

Emily Cooke of The New York Times summed up her review by focusing on the clarity of Land's suffering in the work: "Land’s memoir is not particularly artful. The narration advances with some circularity; the language is often stale. But her book has the needed quality of reversing the direction of the gaze.... It’s worth listening to."

In The Washington Post, Jenny Rogers writes, "Maid isn’t about how hard work can save you but about how false that idea is. It’s one woman’s story of inching out of the dirt and how the middle class turns a blind eye to the poverty lurking just a few rungs below—and it’s one worth reading."

Kirkus Reviews concludes that Maid is "[a]n important memoir that should be required reading for anyone who has never struggled with poverty."

On the other hand, Nancy Rommelmann from Newsday asserted, "Land may be living on one side of the divide while trying to get to the other — she badly wants to become a writer and writes during the margins of time she has available — but her method of calling close attention to personal affronts can grown wearying."

The book was the January 2022 selection of the L.A. Times Book Club.

Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive was adapted to a 10-episode limited series Maid (2021) for the streaming service Netflix and released on October 1, 2021.

The series starred Margaret Qualley, Andie MacDowell and Nick Robinson.

On October 24, 2021, Forbes reported that Maid has remained in the most viewed "Top 5 Shows" since its release in numerous countries.

According to Netflix, the show will likely reach 67 million households in its first four weeks, surpassing the record set by The Queen’s Gambit, which was watched by 62 million subscribers.

National Domestic Violence Hotline and other resources were mentioned after each episode of Maid.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline received more calls in the month after Maid premiere than any other month in its entire 25-year history.

In 2023, Maid again entered Netflix's Top Ten shows, in part because of viral TikTok videos.

Land's second book was announced in 2020 for release by One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

The book was originally conceived as a combination of Land's experiences and a deeply reported investigation into the high costs of higher education, but, as Land told The Washington Post in 2023, "I’m not a journalist — I don’t even know the code of ethics for all of that — so it was this really intimidating thing.... My editor told me: 'The Netflix series [Maid] is so incredible. Everybody’s just loving it. I know you’ve been struggling with this book. And you can write whatever you want.'"

Class: A Memoir of Motherhood, Hunger, and Higher Education, was published on November 7, 2023''.

'' The book details Land's personal experiences with higher education and poverty in the United States, recounting her experiences as an undergraduate English major at the University of Montana.

Land spoke of her inspiration to write Class in a Publishers Weekly interview in 2023, saying: "I mostly wanted to write about the most important thing I’ve ever done: getting myself through college. I decided to focus on my final year, when I got pregnant with my second child. It was what I called my Britney Spears year—if I could get through that, then I could get through anything. I really needed this story when I was buried in it."

Good Morning America picked Class as their book club choice for November 2023.

However, Class was released with less fanfare than Maid, garnering few pre-publication reviews. Reviewers praised Land's candor in sharing her experiences as a single parent and college student.

A prepublication review from Publishers Weekly calls the book a "frank and captivating memoir."