Nice to meet you!
I’m Maria.

Maria Zoccola is a queer Southern writer and educator from Memphis, Tennessee. She is the author of HELEN OF TROY, 1993 (Scribner), a New York Times Editors’ Choice pick and an NPR and The New Yorker best book of 2025. She holds writing degrees from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and Falmouth University in Cornwall, England.

Maria has worked and written for nonprofits both big and small, and from 2017-2021 managed Deep Center’s Young Author Project in Savannah, Georgia, a program embedding creative writing workshops within the Savannah–Chatham County Public School System and serving 400 young people annually.

Maria’s fiction and poetry can be found in such venues as The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Fantasy Magazine, the Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, Electric Literature’s The Commuter, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best New Poets, has been a finalist for Best of the Net, and has received a special mention for the Pushcart Prize.

Maria is represented by Kelsey Day of Aragi, Inc.

For publicity inquiries, please contact Ellie Crowley:

ellie.crowley (at) simonandschuster.com