Maxine Finsterwald was born in Marion, Wisconsin, in 1906 and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She was a graduate of Wellesley College and the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Finsterwald got her start writing for radio while still in Detroit. She wrote, directed, and acted in the Kaffee Klatch and wrote half-hour comedies for Playhouse of the Air. Moving to New York, she wrote for "Words at War" at NBC. She also wrote plays for the theater, newspaper and magazine features, and medical articles. She was published in everything from the Atlantic Monthly and Seventeen to the Medical Tribune and Radiology News. She wrote her plays using the pen name, Maxine Wood. One of her early plays, Giants in Chains, won the Otto H. Kahn prize in 1928. Another of her works, On Whitman Avenue, addressed race relations. Her works have been performed on and off Broadway as well as in regional theaters.