New book, coming February 25th, 2025!

⭐ In a starred review, Kirkus calls Bad Badger, A Love Story “A tender friendship tale with a luster all its own.” Preorder now from your favorite bookstore.

Maryrose’s most recent book is Alice’s Farm, A Rabbits’ Tale, a critically lauded middle-grade novel which the New York Times called “delightful and quirky and full of good will…necessary for some kids right now.” This tale of a wild rabbit who joins forces with a human boy in order to save their shared farmland home was named a Charlotte Huck recommended book by the NCTE. Newbery medalist Rebecca Stead called it “tender and wonderful. It’s a fantasy, it’s real, it's just a joy. And absolutely a book for our times."

Maryrose is the author of The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place, the acclaimed middle-grade series about a teenaged governess and her three raised-by-wolves pupils, published by Balzer + Bray. Titles in the six-book series have appeared on “Best Children’s Books of the Year” lists from NPR, Christian Science Monitor, Kirkus, and others. They’ve been Junior Library Guild selections and received multiple starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, and Booklist.

(The fun with Miss Penelope Lumley and her wolfish pupils continues at The Swanburne Academy, an online community for incorrigibly curious families who love to learn and grow, together.)

Maryrose has published seven novels for young adults, including My Life: The Musical (Delacorte) and Why I Let My Hair Grow Out (Berkley Books). Her personal essays and short fiction appear in Recycle This Book: 100 Top Children’s Book Authors Tell You How to Go Green (Random House), Dear Bully: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories (HarperCollins), Who Done It? (Soho Teen), and Starry-Eyed (Running Press).

She started her creative career in the theater, appearing in the original Broadway cast of Merrily We Roll Along, the cult flop-turned-beloved Stephen Sondheim/George Furth musical featured in the 2016 documentary, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened (now streaming on Netflix). She studied acting and film and television writing at NYU, and comedy writing and improv with the Groundlings. Her work as a lyricist/librettist for musical theatre has made her a three-time winner of the Richard Rodgers Award, administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

An unabashed story structure nerd, Maryrose is a deep believer in the power of well-structured, gorgeously written narratives to have a lasting impact. She offers training and mentorship for writers through her own program, called Path of the Storyteller. She’s taught fiction writing at CUNY-Lehman College and NYU’s Gallatin School, and served on the faculty of the Stony Brook Children’s Literature Fellows program.

Maryrose is a native New Yorker who’s also put down roots in Southern California. She has two amazing adult children and now lives and writes in southern Italy.