Maria is a writer, workshop leader and coach who facilitates The Butterfly Series, a writing and creative arts workshop for women who want to explore what’s next in their life journey. Her essay What Matters was selected for the 2016 San Francisco production of Listen to Your Mother and her poem, Womanhood was recently published in the Apogee Journal. In 2017, her essay Meet Me By the River will appear in ALL THE WOMEN IN MY FAMILY SING, the forthcoming anthology edited by Deborah Santana. Since 2014, she’s hosted Women’s Salons – gatherings showcasing women of color artists who share their work in film, writing and music. She is finalizing her debut novel, ROSIE'S BLUES a story inspired by the experience of her mother opening their family home in Hackensack, New Jersey as a shelter for battered women and children and is working on her next book, Jobs: Life Lessons through Paystubs. She is a member of Write on Mamas, a San Francisco Bay Area based writers group.