Maud Liston was the daughter of William Liston and Marion J. Liston of Kapunda and Westbourne Park, the fourth of seven children. She never married. Her father worked for the National Bank and later formed the company that became Goldsborough Mort.
Liston contributed verse to Australian papers and journals including The Register, and was one of only four South Australian writers (and the most prolific of them), to contribute to Poetry in Australasia: The Spinner, A Magazine of Australasian Verse (Melbourne 1925-27). Her story 'Cinderella's Party' was produced as a play in schools in Argentina, the slums of London, and Alaska.
Suffering rheumatoid arthritis and the after-effects of a stroke, Liston was admitted to the Home for Incurables in 1935. She died there in 1944.
