Born in Guam in 1989 while her father was stationed at Andersen Air Force Base, today Ilysha Maria McMillan is the founder, writer and owner of Maria’s Worlds, a children’s book company that has sold and donated copies of her books and learning materials on 6 different continents.

Ilysha is trilingual and attributes this to spending 8 years living in China, her American father and her Hispanic mother. She graduated from Norfolk State University with a Mass Communications degree and wrote for magazines after she graduated. In 2024, she graduated from Queens University or Charlotte with a M.F.A in Creative Writing Non-fiction.

The back story: Ilysha went backpacking  in South East Asia in January of 2013. Writing about political issues was frowned upon there so she decided to take a job as an English teacher in order to live in China. Over those years, Ilysha dove into the exporting business world, in-home tutoring services and special events for elementary school students.

About Maria’s Worlds: From a robust Blog and Worksheets for students to Books (in English and Spanish) and Videos for kids, plus a Supersam series (that includes this cool T-shirt, right, for sale on the site), this is a program that will inspire and help educate kids around the world!

Learn more: MariasWorlds.com