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Ayelet Waldman
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Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldman (Hebrew: איילת ולדמן; born December 11, 1964) is an Israeli-American novelist and essayist. She has written seven mystery novels in the series The Mommy-Track Mysteries and four other novels. She has also written autobiographical essays about motherhood. Waldman spent three years working as a federal public defender and her fiction draws on her experience as a lawyer.
Ayelet Waldman was born in Jerusalem. Her grandparents on both sides were Jewish immigrants to North America from Ukraine early in the 20th century. Her father, Leonard, was from Montreal, Canada, but was living in Israel when he met her mother, Ricki. After they married, they moved to Jerusalem. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the family moved back to Montreal, then Rhode Island, finally settling in Ridgewood, New Jersey, when Waldman was in sixth grade.
She was raised in a Jewish family, attended Hebrew school and Jewish summer camps, and lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a year while in the tenth grade. She has said that her parents were atheists, but very Jewish, and that her "whole life was immersed in Judaism, but in a very specific kind of Labor–Zionist Judaism." Despite this, she did not celebrate becoming a bat mitzvah.
Waldman attended Wesleyan University, where she studied psychology and government, and studied in Israel in her junior year, graduating in 1986. She returned to Israel after college to again live on a kibbutz, but found it too sexist for her taste. She then entered Harvard Law School and graduated with a J.D. in 1991.
Waldman has been married to fellow author Michael Chabon since 1993. They live in a 1907 Craftsman house in the Elmwood district of Berkeley, California. The couple work from the same office in the backyard of their home. They edit each other's work, and offer each other advice on writing, sometimes going on "plot walks" to discuss issues. In 2025, Waldman and Chabon's son Abraham, then a 22-year-old student at New York University was arrested for "rape and strangulation." The rape charge was later dropped.
Many characters in her fiction are Jewish. Her novel Love and Treasure is about the Holocaust.
Waldman has written several times about her 2002 diagnosis of bipolar disorder, an illness that runs in her family, and has spoken publicly about parenting while having a mental illness.
After graduating from law school, Waldman clerked for a federal judge, worked in a large corporate law firm in New York for a year, and then moved to California with Michael Chabon, where she became a criminal defense lawyer. Waldman was a federal public defender for three years in the Central District of California. Chabon mentioned on their first date that it was his intention to care for his children so his wife could pursue her career, which he did after the birth of their first and second children. After the birth of her first child, she tried juggling legal work with mothering, then left her job to be with her husband and child. This was short-lived.
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Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldman (Hebrew: איילת ולדמן; born December 11, 1964) is an Israeli-American novelist and essayist. She has written seven mystery novels in the series The Mommy-Track Mysteries and four other novels. She has also written autobiographical essays about motherhood. Waldman spent three years working as a federal public defender and her fiction draws on her experience as a lawyer.
Ayelet Waldman was born in Jerusalem. Her grandparents on both sides were Jewish immigrants to North America from Ukraine early in the 20th century. Her father, Leonard, was from Montreal, Canada, but was living in Israel when he met her mother, Ricki. After they married, they moved to Jerusalem. After the Six-Day War in 1967, the family moved back to Montreal, then Rhode Island, finally settling in Ridgewood, New Jersey, when Waldman was in sixth grade.
She was raised in a Jewish family, attended Hebrew school and Jewish summer camps, and lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a year while in the tenth grade. She has said that her parents were atheists, but very Jewish, and that her "whole life was immersed in Judaism, but in a very specific kind of Labor–Zionist Judaism." Despite this, she did not celebrate becoming a bat mitzvah.
Waldman attended Wesleyan University, where she studied psychology and government, and studied in Israel in her junior year, graduating in 1986. She returned to Israel after college to again live on a kibbutz, but found it too sexist for her taste. She then entered Harvard Law School and graduated with a J.D. in 1991.
Waldman has been married to fellow author Michael Chabon since 1993. They live in a 1907 Craftsman house in the Elmwood district of Berkeley, California. The couple work from the same office in the backyard of their home. They edit each other's work, and offer each other advice on writing, sometimes going on "plot walks" to discuss issues. In 2025, Waldman and Chabon's son Abraham, then a 22-year-old student at New York University was arrested for "rape and strangulation." The rape charge was later dropped.
Many characters in her fiction are Jewish. Her novel Love and Treasure is about the Holocaust.
Waldman has written several times about her 2002 diagnosis of bipolar disorder, an illness that runs in her family, and has spoken publicly about parenting while having a mental illness.
After graduating from law school, Waldman clerked for a federal judge, worked in a large corporate law firm in New York for a year, and then moved to California with Michael Chabon, where she became a criminal defense lawyer. Waldman was a federal public defender for three years in the Central District of California. Chabon mentioned on their first date that it was his intention to care for his children so his wife could pursue her career, which he did after the birth of their first and second children. After the birth of her first child, she tried juggling legal work with mothering, then left her job to be with her husband and child. This was short-lived.
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