In Conversation with Maria Smilios

Maria Smilios an award winning author of The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis.

She was born and raised in New York City and holds a Masters of Arts from Boston University in Religion & Literature where she was a Henry Luce Scholar and a Presidential Scholar. She also taught Essay and Research writing in the university’s writing program.

In 2007, she left Boston and moved back to New York City to teach English literature at an all-girls high school. While working as a developmental editor for Springer Science & Media she read a line in a book that led her to discover the story of the Black Angels.

The Black Angels won the 2024 Christopher Award in literature, which celebrates works that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit.” It was also a finalist for the prestigious Gotham Book Prize, an NASW Science in Society Journalism finalist, an NPR Science Friday Summer Read for 2024, and shortlisted for the English PEN literary award.

Additionally, New York City and State recently honored Maria for “outstanding service” and “positive contribution” to the people of New York.  The book greatly informed the Staten Island Museum’s exhibit Taking Care: The Black Angels of Sea View,” which is on display through November of 2024.

Through writing the book, she has become in involved in advocating for health equity, especially affordable and accessible TB drugs in TB heavy countries by working with and supporting organizations such as EndTB, TB Alliance, and Partners in Health.

In the past, she has written for The Guardian, Narratively, The Rumpus, Dame Magazine, The Forward, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, The Emancipator, Newsweek, among others.

She is an adjunct at Columbia University School of Public Health and keynote speaker.