Maria Cichosz is a novelist and scholar of art, theory, drug cultures, and the history of ideas. She holds a Ph.D. in Modern Thought & Literature from Stanford University where she was recently a Humanities & Sciences Postdoctoral Dean’s Fellow. Maria currently teaches literature and creative writing as an Assistant Professor at Victoria College in the University of Toronto and is the Fiction and Book Reviews Editor at Broken Pencil magazine. Her fiction and scholarship have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Critique, The Puritan, CRAFT, and on the CBC Literary Awards shortlist, among other places. Her first novel, Cam & Beau, was named a 2020 fall book pick by The Toronto Star, reviewed in the Quill & Quire, and a finalist for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Awards.

Maria is an award-winning writing instructor and experienced lecturer who has taught classes in creative writing, professional editing, and creative non-fiction at Stanford University, the City University of New York, and the University of Toronto. She is available for class visits, workshops, and public presentations for high school and adult audiences.

Maria is currently working on a new novel with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.