Maria Dahvana Headley (born June 21, 1977) is an American novelist, memoirist, editor, translator, poet, and playwright.

Her work includes Magonia, a young-adult space-fantasy novel, Queen of Kings, an alternate-history fantasy novel about Cleopatra, and The Mere Wife, a retelling of Beowulf.

[4][5] Published August 2020, Headley's translation of Beowulf was noted for its use of contemporary language, invoking the mood of urban legend, and for humanizing minor or villainous characters, including Grendel's mother.

[3] In October, 2015, Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor Sean McDonald acquired The Mere Wife at auction, describing it as "a ferocious, sexy, and politically topical literary adaptation of Beowulf set in present-day New York".

In early 2010, Dutton purchased Headley's debut novel Queen of Kings, which explores "the transcendent powers of love even beyond death, entwining the true story of Antony and Cleopatra and Rome's invasion of Alexandria with a narrative in which the Queen of Egypt sacrifices her soul to save her fallen husband and in return is transformed into an immortal goddess bent on the destruction of the Roman Empire".

The Year of Yes has been optioned for the screen by Paramount Pictures and the Jinks/Cohen Company (producers of American Beauty, and Big Fish, among other films),[14] and has been or will be translated into Korean, German, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, and Chinese, as well as appearing in an additional English-language edition in the UK and world marketplace through HarperCollins Thorsons Element imprint.

The novella The End of the Sentence, co-written with Kat Howard, is "a fairytale of ghosts and guilt, literary horror blended with the visuals of Jean Cocteau, failed executions, shapeshifting goblins, and magical blacksmithery."

[25] The novelette Game was published by Subterranean Press in 2012 and appeared in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2013, edited by Paula Guran.

[28] Headley is co-editor with Neil Gaiman on the New York Times-bestselling anthology Unnatural Creatures, an anthology to benefit 826DC, containing natural history-themed monster stories by a variety of authors both living and dead, including Samuel R. Delany, E. Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Nalo Hopkinson, Headley and Gaiman.

[citation needed] She has been a featured author at ABA Winter Institute,[31] Bumbershoot, Wordstock, and the Texas Book Festival.