Maria L. Denjongpa

Maria Denjongpa is a teacher, writer and paper-mache artist. She studied anthropology at Brown University, where she met her Sikkimese husband. She spent much of her adult life in Sikkim, learning Sikkimese, teaching English and listening to stories of miracles.

She received an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and was a fellow at the MacDowell Arts Colony, where she worked on a memoir about living in Sikkim. Several of her essays were published in The Hungry Mind Review.

Her children’s books, Miss Lee and the Mosquito, Sonam’s Seasons, The Story of Miss Q and Fancy Full Stop, and Buddha, a Life in Stories were published by Scholastic India. The Truth about the Tooth, a Buddhist folktale, was published by Karadi Tales.

The Girl Who Became a Buddha, the story of the woman who raised Buddha, is her first novel. Published by Duckbill/Penguin, it was released on April 27, 2026. She is presently at work on a second YA historical novel about the Buddhist teacher Asanga.