About Clayton

photo by Asha Poyzer

Clayton Maxwell is an Austin-based travel, culture, and lifestyle writer who has pedaled in the footsteps of Don Quijote, bumped her way to Marrakech in an overnight train, and survived on coconut juice for a week—all for the sake of the story. During a four-year stint in Spain, she was on staff at In Madrid Magazine, where she played every part from monthly restaurant reviewer to photographer to copy editor. She was also a columnist on Spanish etiquette and language for Spain Magazine, where she dispensed advice on such things as how to fake the subjunctive to the perils of wearing shorts in Spanish cities.

A regular contributor to the international photography magazine, Eyemazing, Clayton has written for media as diverse as the Time Out Madrid travel guide to The Travel Channel website to the Austin Chronicle alternative weekly. She has penned travel and culture pieces for Conde Nast Traveler, BBC’s Olive Magazine, Wallpaper, and Austin Monthly among other publications. She also tackles web-based copywriting, working for online boutique Brilliant Imports.

Clayton now lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and two young children. She first hit town in 1988 to attend the University of Texas and has kept at least one toe in the city ever since. As a U.T. English major, she was the short story editor of the student literary journal, Analecta, and enjoyed acting out her Elizabethan fantasies in a little barn at Shakespeare at Winedale. After graduation and a short residence in Guatemala, Clayton returned to UT for a dual master’s program in Latin American Studies and Community and Regional Planning. The University supported her return trips to Guatemala where she did original fieldwork in Spanish and Kaqchikel Maya on the country’s Mayan cultural movement.

After grad school, Clayton kept her Spanish flowing by working in Cuban refugee resettlement at Caritas of Austin.

Clayton is currently on the board of the Austin Public Library Friend’s Foundation, editor of the NUNA neighborhood newsletter, and an active member of Appamada Zen Center.

For more on Clayton, read her blog, where she digs into more of the stuff that makes her hum, like her obsession with Moby Dick, good poetry, and other things that make life better.