Maxine Chernoff (born 1952) is an American novelist, writer, poet, academic and literary magazine editor.

Chernoff is a professor and Chair of the Creative Writing program at San Francisco State University.

With her husband, Paul Hoover, she edits the long-running literary journal New American Writing.

Chernoff's novel American Heaven and her book of short stories, Some of Her Friends That Year, were finalists for the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award.

With Paul Hoover, she has translated The Selected Poems of Friedrich Hölderlin (Omnidawn Press, 2008) which won the 2009 PEN Translation Prize.