McDonagh was born in New York City, the daughter of Don McDonagh, a dance critic and author, and Jennifer Jane Tobutt,^[2] She is of Irish descent.^[3] Her grandparents, both Irish emigrants, operated the Moylan Tavern in Morningside Heights.^[3]

She received her Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College and her Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University,^[4] where she co-founded and edited the magazine Columbia Film Review.^[5] She was simultaneously working in the publicity department of the New York City Ballet,^[4] eventually becoming head of publicity.^[6]

In 1991, McDonagh released her book Broken Mirrors, Broken Minds, a scholarly analysis, expanded from her master's thesis,^[7] of the films of Italian giallo writer-producer-director Dario Argento.^[8] An expanded 2010 reissue was named one of PopMatters' "Best Non-Fiction of 2010".^[9]

After leaving New York City Ballet, McDonagh taught film as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College,^[10] during which time she completed Filmmaking on the Fringe: The Good, The Bad, and the Deviant Directors^[11][12] and The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time.^[13][14] Her freelance work during this period included film pieces for The New York Times,^[15] Entertainment Weekly,^[16] Film Comment,^[17] Time Out New York,^[18] Premiere^[19] Fangoria,^[20] and other magazines and newspapers. From 1995 to 2008, she was senior movies editor for the website of the magazine TV Guide.^[21][22]

Her book Movie Lust (2006) was third in the Sasquatch Books series begun with Book Lust by Nancy Pearl and Music Lust by Nic Harcourt.^[23][24] In 2006, she was a co-founder of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists.^[25] She is also a member of the New York Film Critics Online.^[26]

In 2014, McDonagh created the company 120 Days Books to republish rare 1970s and 1980s gay-erotica genre novels, beginning with a pair of two-in-one volumes: the crime thrillers Man Eater and Night of the Sadist and the supernatural fantasies Vampire's Kiss and Gay Vampire.^[27] Later in the decade, this became an imprint of Riverdale Avenue Books.^[28]

McDonagh provides interviews and second-channel commentary on DVD / Blu-ray releases, including for director Paul Schrader's Blue Collar,^[29] Dario Argento's Tenebrae,^[30] and Douglas Buck's Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America,^[31] and liner notes, including for the Criterion Collection releases The Tunnel, The Innocents,^[32] Kuroneko,^[33] and the paired Corridors of Blood/The Haunted Strangler,^[34] Arrow Video's Dressed to Kill,^[35] and Second Sight Films' The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 4K UHD.^[36] She stars in a documentary short, speaking on serial-killer cinema, on the Criterion Collection release of The Silence of the Lambs.^[37] Since 2016, she has been a recurring guest host of the podcast The Projection Booth.^[38]

She has appeared in documentaries, including Night Bites: Women and Their Vampires (2003) for WE: Women's Entertainment^[39] and Pretty Bloody: The Women of Horror (2009), for Canada's Space network,^[40] and as a panelist at film events by the Museum of the Moving Image and others.^[41][42] She has served on the juries of film festivals including the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, Canada.^[43]

• Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento, (London, England, Sun Tavern Fields, 1991; reissued New York, Citadel Press, 1994) ISBN 0-9517012-4-X; expanded and reissued, Minneapolis, Minnesota, University of Minnesota Press, 2010 ISBN 978-0816656073^[44][45][46]
• Filmmaking on the Fringe: The Good, the Bad, and the Deviant Directors (New York, Carol Publishing, 1995) ISBN 0-8065-1557-0
• The 50 Most Erotic Films of All Time: From Pandora's Box to Basic Instinct (New York, Carol Publishing Corporation, 1996) ISBN 0-8065-1697-6
• Movie Lust: Recommended Viewing for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (Seattle, Wash., Sasquatch Books, 2006) ISBN 1-57061-478-4

As co-author edit

• Lassalle, Nancy, and Maitland McDonagh, Lincoln Kirstein, Peter Martins, Jerome Robbins, New York City Ballet: Fortieth Anniversary (New York, New York City Ballet, 1988)^[47]

As editor edit

• McDonagh, Maitland (editor). Holiday Gay: Tales of Love, Lust, Romance and Other Seasonal Gifts (2018) New York: Riverdale Avenue Books. ISBN 978-1-626-01494-7

Anthologies edit

Maitland McDonagh essays appear in:

• Bryce, Allan, ed. (2000). "The Living Dead at Miskatonic Morgue [and] Sometimes They Come Back...Again". Zombie. Liskead, Cornwall, England: Stray Cat Publishing. ISBN 978-0953326129.
• Bryce, Allan, ed. (2000). "Martine Beswicke: Sister Hyde [and] Barbara Steele: Witches and Bitches". Fantasy Females. Liskead, Cornwall, England: Stray Cat Publishing. ISBN 0953326144.
• White, Andrew, ed. (2000). "You Gotta Have Park: Come Down by the Riverside". Time Out Book of New York Walks. London: Time Out / Penguin. ISBN 978-0140296228.
• Sidaris, Andy (2003). "On Andy's Gang". Bullets Bombs and Babes. Heavy Metal Books. ISBN 978-1932413007.
• Horwath, Alexander, ed. (2004). "The Exploitation Generation. or: How Marginal Movies Came in from the Cold". The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s. Amsterdam University Press. ISBN 978-9053564936.
• Edwards, Matthew, ed. (2007). "Writing Argento". Film Out of Bounds: Essays and Interviews on Non-Mainstream Cinema Worldwide. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0786429707.
• Nette, Andrew, ed. (2019). "Fifty Shades of Gay: An Introduction to the Gay Adult Pulp of the 1970s". Sticking It to the Man: Revolution and Counterculture in Pulp and Popular Fiction, 1950 to 1980. PM Press. ISBN 9781629636665.
• Nette, Andrew; Iain McIntyre, eds. (2021). "The Stars My Destination: The Future According to Gay Adult Science Fiction Novels of the 1970s". Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950 to 1985. PM Press. pp. 111–119. ISBN 978-1629639321. Book a finalist nominee for a Hugo Award.^[48]
• Doyle, Michael, ed. (2022). "Re-Animator: Stuart Gordon". Stuart Gordon: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series). University Press of Mississippi. pp. 73–85. ISBN 978-1496837745.

• Maitland McDonagh at IMDb
• Sieber, Mark. "Dario Argento, Maitland McDonagh, and Two Evil Eyes". HorrorDrive-In.com. Archived from the original on February 15, 2011. Retrieved June 13, 2015.
• Interview with Maitland McDonagh at Behind the Couch
• Edelstein, David (October 13, 2002). "Monsters Onscreen And Within". The New York Times. Retrieved May 29, 2023.
• "Maitland McDonagh". Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Archived from the original on February 4, 2015. Retrieved June 12, 2015.