Maria Takolander is an award-winning Finnish-Australian fiction writer and poet. She is the inaugural winner of the Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley short-story prize, and her debut collection of short fiction, The Double (Text 2013), was a finalist for the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s ‘Best New Writing Award’. Maria is also the author of four books of poetry, the most recent of which, Trigger Warning (UQP 2021), won a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award and was shortlisted for an Association for the Study of Australian Literature Gold Medal. As a public artist, her words can be found at the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria in Melbourne and on bronze plaques in Geelong, where she lives with her husband and son.
'Eerily beautiful and not for the faint of heart...It's the kind of book that will unnerve you and keep you up at night.' -- Readings on The Double 'Announces the arrival of a considerable talent.' * Australian on The Double * 'Takolander's stories are beautifully melancholy, full of arresting, dream-like sequences and imagery that stay with one long after the final page is turned.' * Arts Hub on The Double * 'The Double is a compulsively readable book, and Takolander's prose is fluid and engaging.' * Blurb Magazine on The Double * ‘The Double can be brutal yet remain achingly moving and painfully poignant; there are some outstanding, even breathtaking sentences and scenes in this book.’ * Sydney Morning Herald on The Double * 'One of the best contemporary short story collections I’ve read, Takolander’s fictions are intellectual, dark, strange and often dystopian.' -- Literary Minded on The Double 'Takolander’s angle is the familiar made strange, and her work has a wry quality that echoes early Atwood’s fierce genius...[Her] craft and skill is stunning.' * Overland on The Double *