Stephanie L. Fowler is a graduate of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland and the winner of the 2001 Sophie Kerr Prize, the largest undergraduate literary award in the country. She won the award for a collection of creative nonfiction short stories about the Delmarva Peninsula. That collection, Crossings, eventually became her first book, published in May 2008.

Fowler’s second book, Chasing Alice: How the Life, Murder, and Legacy of an English Teacher Changed a Delmarva Community, was published in September 2020. This nonfiction book was inspired by the loss of Alice Davis, Fowler’s English teacher and writing mentor. Chasing Alice won several awards: 2021 Bronze Medal winner from the Independent Publishers Book Awards in the True Crime Category, a silver medal from the Nonfiction Authors Association, First Place for Nonfiction in the 2021 Delaware Press Association awards, and Second Place for Nonfiction in 2021 from the National Federation of Press Women.

Her third book is Into the Night: A Jailbreak and Double Homicide on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, is set to be published in November 2025. This book covers the 1968 murders of Wicomico County Sheriff Samuel A. Graham and jailer Albert L. Kelly by a prisoner named Joseph J. Bartholomey, Jr.

Fowler was named the 2021 Eastern Shore Writers’ Association Legacy Award winner. In 2016, She was named as a Light of Literacy award winner. She has been a longtime member of the Eastern Shore Writers’ Association as well as the Maryland Writers’ Association.  

In May 2013, Fowler and her wife, Patricia “Patty” Gregorio, opened Salt Water Media, an independent self-publishing company in Berlin, Maryland. Her passion for writing and seeing those works brought to life inspired her to help other writers do the same.

Although she is a born and bred Marylander and will always remain a Marylander at heart, Fowler now lives in southern coastal Delaware with her wife, Patty, and their sweet pup, Lima.