About Maria

Maria is currently working on her third book which has grown out of a collection of unpublished short stories.
Maria is the product of immigrant grandparents, mostly Irish, mostly Catholic, but also Scottish and English, young people who fled their homeland for the myriad of reasons people did in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before settling at the bottom of the world in New Zealand.
Her writing highlights that spirit of endurance and risk-taking, and her life mirrors something of that journey as it navigates a sea of fog and faith and soul-searching.
After leaving school Maria studied music at Auckland University and teacher training.
She lives with her partner, Nicholas, on the water’s edge in the inner harbour of Auckland, the City of Sails, where her upstairs writing room faces soaring pines, a shifting tide and setting sun.