Maria Scinto

• In 2007, Maria ghost-wrote "The Takeout Cookbook: How to Order, Eat, and Care for Food You Didn't Cook," a 164-page "cookbook" with but a single recipe. (Spoiler: It's for sheep's feet in white sauce, yum.)
• She used to host a podcast called "Quirky Cookbooks," where she'd cook a selection of items from her extensive themed cookbook collection including astrology-based recipes, favorite dishes of Attitude Era WWF superstars, and recipes dictated to a ghost whisperer by spirits of the dearly departed.
• Her proudest accomplishment to date is having managed to name-drop Macho Man Randy Savage 12 times and Chris Jericho six times in articles that are actually about food.

Experience

Maria has a background as a librarian that gives her the research skills necessary to dig up obscure food facts, but she began writing on the side as a broke single mom nearly 20 years ago. She's written for print publications including two DC-area weekly newspapers, the Montgomery Journal and the Fairfax Times, as well as Northern Virginia Magazine where a piece she wrote on area child care centers was awarded a Virginia Press Association first place prize for personal service writing. She has also published numerous articles on websites including Realtor.com, Movoto, AZCentral, Livestrong, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Maria began writing full-time for Static Media in 2019 and during her tenure with the brand has produced features for Wrestling Inc., Grunge, Tasting Table, and Mashed as well as news articles for Nicki Swift, Health Digest, List, Tasting Table, and Mashed. She considers herself a generalist, but eventually settled on Mashed as a home brand because it allows her to write about all things food.

Education

Maria has a bachelor's degree in comparative literature that exposed her to a wide variety of quality writing and gives her some historical context as well as an appreciation for her craft. She later earned a master's in library and information science and worked as a librarian for 12 years in public and school settings, giving her a thorough grounding in research techniques, which enabled her to dig up information on any topic and present it in a format that is both useful and entertaining.