Maria Ostrowski’s creative nonfiction and poetry appears in Ovunque Siamo, Poetica Review, HerStry, 34th Parallel Magazine, and The Book Smuggler’s Den, as well as the anthologies, (HER)oics: Women’s lived experiences during the coronavirus pandemic and Letting Go: An Anthology of Attempts. In 2019, her novel manuscript, Yet From Those Flames No Light, was a finalist for the Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence in mystery and suspense. While studying for her degree in English from the University of Connecticut, she interned at Curbstone Press and volunteered as a mentor for the Connecticut Youth Poetry Slam Team. She started her career at LIMRA as a copyeditor for MarketFacts magazine and later, worked in marketing — managing the company’s online marketing team. After taking an independent fiction tutorial through NYU's School of Professional Studies, she attended The Peripatetic Writers Workshops in Woodstock, NY and Kent, England. Pre-pandemic, Maria loved being a teaching artist for The Bushnell’s Partner’s in Arts and Education Program, leading poetry workshops in schools within the Greater Hartford area.Currently, Maria is writing The Bones of Hope, an atmospheric suspense novel that weaves the tales of three women across a century, grappling with fertility, independence, and destiny. A toddler mom, who enjoys finger-painting almost as much as her son, Maria lives in Connecticut with a husband who patiently accepts the chaos of a household run by a writer. Follow her writing life on instagram: @the_roughdraft