Maria Adnan Doriwala is a Dubai-born writer of Indian heritage, now calling Canada home.

From when she was little, Maria had a deep love for books. Diving into them felt like an escape — from the adventures of the Famous Five to the drama of Mallory Towers and the magical world of Harry Potter. Her father would stand in line to grab the first copy, hurrying home like a treasure in his hands, unknowingly helping Maria build an unbreakable connection with words. Every middle school essay saved carefully, her parents encouraged her to write. Scribbling her feelings away in diary after diary, she wrote her first romance novel in high school and hid it away in a memory box, thinking it wasn't good enough.

Her career path led her to the buzzy world of hospitality marketing in Dubai, with copywriting at its core. After moving to Canada and working as a freelance copywriter, in the overwhelming depth of postpartum came Duas in the Dark. Typing furiously away in the quiet hours of the night with just the glow of a laptop screen filling the darkness, Maria wrote. Stopping ever so often to hear her little one breathe deeply in her sleep, she let the words flow and it felt so, so good.

Through her Little Duas, Big Hearts series and Lights & Love Press, Maria hopes to create books that children grow up remembering, the same way she did.