Maria Miniailo was born on July 5th, 1988 in Kyiv (Ukraine). She graduated from
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 2010 and holds a Master’s degree in international communications. During her studies, Maria Miniailo worked on a local student newspaper as a journalist, then became its editor. After graduation she worked in advertising and the communications sphere as a brand/PR manager. Her first short story collection, Four Shades of Happiness, and her first novel, Dialogues with the Devil, were published in 2016. For her next book, the short story collection Stories of the Old Town (2017), Maria Miniailo was awarded a diploma of the Maximilian Kiriyenko-Voloshin Literary Award (Ukraine). In 2020, for her second novel The Children of Grad (2019), she became a Laureate of the Maximilian Kiriyenko-Voloshin Literary Award. Her third novel, Gone Missing, was published in autumn 2021.