Born in Israel in 1971, Maya Arad is the author of twelve books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Arad received a PhD in linguistics from University College London. For the past twenty years, she has lived in California, where she is Writer in Residence at Stanford University's Taube Center for Jewish Studies. She is the inaugural recipient of the Jewish Book Council Jane Weitzman Prize for New Israeli Fiction (2019) as well as the Newman Prize (2024). 

The Hebrew Teacher is her first book to appear in English translation (New Vessel Press, translated by Jessica Cohen) and is the winner of the National Jewish Book Award for Hebrew Fiction in Translation for 2025. Her novel, Happy New Years, will appear in English in August this year.