About Maria

I know I am lucky because I live in a city I love.

I was born in Hartford, Connecticut, but I am really from Providence, Rhode Island. I have lived in apartments and projects, at my grandparents’ house and an army base in California, and in houses that my family rented and owned and always called home.

I have also lived in Ivy League dorms, at the YWCA in Dublin, Ireland, and slept on bedside cots in a children’s hospital in Boston for short stints that seemed like forever.

I have lived in an apartment above a bike shop in Portland, Maine, and then in another one on the second floor of a house with beautiful old wood floors remarkable for their resemblance to a roller coaster. I have lived in an attached townhouse, a three bedroom colonial, and finally, now, in a little apartment in the Portland sky where I can look out at the city and distant mountains and the ocean.

I love my city. I love everywhere I have ever lived. But that’s easy for me to say because I am lucky. I have always had a home.

Official Bio

Maria Testa was born in Hartford, Connecticut, grew up in and around Providence, Rhode Island, and for most of her adult life has lived in Portland, Maine where she and her husband raised their now grown sons. She received bachelor’s degrees in Sociology and American Civilization from Brown University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. After all that time in school (20 straight years since kindergarten!), she finally rebelled and almost immediately expatriated to Dublin, Ireland where she lived at the YWCA and decided to be a writer. Lately, she has been thinking a lot about what it means to be from somewhere and what it means to be home.