Maria Ostrowski

Maria Ostrowski is an award-winning writer of atmospheric fiction.

Her manuscript, THE BONES OF HOPE won two Claymore awards at Killer Nashville (Best Supernatural, 1st Runner Up for Best Unpublished Manuscript), was a 2024 Launch Pad Prose finalist, was just named a 2025 semifinalist for ScreenCraft’s Cinematic Prose Competition, and recently hit #1 on Coverfly’s Red List for top manuscripts.

THE BONES OF HOPE is a New England Gothic with elements of romance and fantasy about 36-year-old Maya Delamare, a mechanical engineer, determined to save her ancestral home and mythical heritage from a storm-conjuring ghost and reclaim herself, amidst personal strife threatening her marriage, career, and ultimately, her life. Through alternating timelines, this Odyssey-inspired Gothic weaves the tales of three women: a maritime pilot, an engineer, and a nymph from a mist-veiled land. Bound by blood and magic, yet separated by a century, they each grapple with fertility, independence, and destiny as they face how the dead’s unhealed trauma threatens the living.

In 2019, her manuscript, Yet From Those Flames No Light, was a finalist for The Daphne du Maurier Award for excellence in mystery and suspense.

Her 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. https://linktr.ee/MariaOstrowski

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.   

After taking an independent fiction tutorial through NYU, she attended The Peripatetic Writers Workshops in Woodstock, NY and Kent, England. Pre-pandemic, Maria loved teaching poetry to kids through The Bushnell’s Partner’s in Arts and Education Program.

Follow her writing life on Instagram: @the_roughdraft