Maria Ferguson is a writer and performer. Her poetry has been widely anthologised and published in literary magazines such as Magma, The Rialto, The North and The Poetry Review. She was a finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2024 and her debut collection, Alright, Girl? (Burning Eye, 2020), was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. She has been commissioned by the Royal Academy of Arts, Stylist magazine and BBC Radio. Her work has been featured in The Guardian and on Radio 4’s The Verb and Woman’s Hour. She is the Associate Producer of LIVEwire Poetry and teaches creative writing in a variety of settings. Her second poetry collection, Swell was published in 2025 by Penguin Random House.

In 2024, Maria created a collection of poems, Pathways, which was commissioned by the Brontë Parsonage Museum.