About Martha

Martha Anne Toll's debut novel, THREE MUSES, was shortlisted for the Gotham Book Prize and won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. THREE MUSES has received glowing tributes since it came out in September 2022. She writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. Toll brings a long career in social justice to her work covering authors of color and women writers as a critic and author interviewer at NPR Books, the Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, The Millions, and elsewhere. She also publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. Toll is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and serves on the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

Toll’s second novel, DUET FOR ONE, will be out in early 2025.

Martha as a college freshman in dance class.

In Martha’s own words:

Fiction is the air I breathe. My fiction is about the emotional power of music and dance, the interplay of time and memory, the meaning of discipline, and love—always love—and death. 

I grew up passionate about ballet, classical music, and education. 

My parents embodied the Jewish adoration of the written word by immersing the family in books. I’ve been a voracious reader since I can remember, and it’s not a surprise that libraries and bookstores are some of my favorite places.

I’m from Philadelphia and was lucky to study at the School of the Pennsylvania Ballet when I was young. What I lacked in talent, I made up for in enthusiasm. I will never forget the joy and fascination I felt as I watched professional dancers rehearse.

At age fourteen, I fell in love with the viola when I met my beloved teacher and mentor Max Aronoff, a founding member of the Curtis String Quartet. Max taught me three life lessons: (1) The music is in the rests; (2) if you break things into component parts, you’ll figure out how to put together the whole; and (3) practice, practice, practice. I performed as a semi-professional orchestra and chamber music player in college and beyond.

I’m a lifelong advocate for racial and social justice. I spent twenty-six years as the founding Executive Director of the Butler Family Fund. Under my leadership, the Fund developed and expanded two major programs with a deep commitment to racial equity: (1) preventing and ending homelessness and (2) fighting injustice in the criminal “justice” system, with particular focus on abolishing the death penalty and ending the sentence of juvenile life without parole. I led the formation of a long-term partnership with the Geneva-based Oak Foundation, spurring national work to help employ people experiencing homelessness, end the connection between criminal justice involvement and homelessness, and de-fund the criminal justice system. I continue to work as a consultant in social justice philanthropy.

Social justice permeates my life as a book critic as well. It is my fervent belief that literary citizenship means doing everything possible to get amazing books into readers’ hands. I have been thrilled to review dozens of books by BIPOC and women writers. I love interviewing authors as well. 

My essays and book reviews appear regularly in NPR, the Washington Post, The Millions, the Los Angeles Review of Book, Pointe Magazine, as well as in The Lily, the Rumpus, Bloom, Scoundrel Time, Music & Literature, Words Without Borders, After the Art, Narrative Magazine, [PANK], Cargo Literary, Tin House blog, The Nervous Breakdown, Heck Magazine, and the Washington Independent Review of Books. My personal essay "Dayenu" was selected for an anthology featuring a range of well-known writers. I’ve been a nominator and critic for NPR's annual book concierge since 2017.

Reading fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose; reading across languages, cultures, and historical time periods; reading authors who share similar points of views and those who differ; reading the old with the new, the well-known with the scarcely known, is, for me, what constitutes the joy of turning the page. 

In 2021, I was excited to be nominated for a Pushcart Prize for my short story “The Gigolo.” My short fiction has also appeared in ​Catapult, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, eMerge, Slush Pile Magazine, Yale's Letters Journal, Poetica E Magazine, and elsewhere.

I am the grateful recipient of a range of artist’s residencies that have given me the space to leave the grid and focus on my writing. I’ve been a Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Virginia and southern France, Monson Arts, and Dairy Hollow. 

I graduated from Yale College and received my law degree from Boston University School of Law. I live with my climate activist husband and my espresso machine in Washington, DC. We are the lucky parents of two daughters.