Stephanie Land

In 2019, Land's debut book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother's Will to Survive was released. It debuted at #3 on The New York Times Best Seller list. The book was an elaboration of a 2015 post that she made to Vox.

The book has received critical acclaim. 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 survived the hardship of her years as a maid, her body exhausted and her brain filled with bleak arithmetic, to offer her testimony. It’s worth listening to." Katy Read of The Star Tribune suggests, "The next time you hear someone say they think poor people are lazy, hand them a copy of Maid. Stephanie Land can tell them otherwise and, unlike most authors who write about poverty, speaks from personal—and recent—experience." In The Washington Post, Jenner 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."

Land grew up between Washington and Anchorage, Alaska,, in a middle class household. A car accident at age 16 led to her having post-traumatic stress disorder 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 informed her writing on issues of poverty and public policy. After six years of cleaning in Washington, she was able to use student loans and Pell grants to move to Missoula, Montana, where she got a B.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Montana in 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 The Huffington Post and Vox. In 2016, she ended her dependence on food stamps and became a writing fellow with the Center for Community Change and the Economic Hardship Program.