Maria Takolander is the author of The Double (and Other Stories) (Text 2013), which was short-listed for the 2015 Melbourne Prize for Literature, and which was named one of the best books of the year by The Australian and other forums. The inaugural winner of the Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize, Maria’s stories have also been anthologised nationally and internationally. Maria is the author of three collections of poetry, Narcissism (Whitmore press 2005), Ghostly Subjects (Salt 2007) and The End of the World (Giramondo 2014), with a fourth collection, Trigger Warning, in press with UQP. She is now finishing a novel for Text Publishing. Also a widely published scholar, specialising in magical realism and theories of creativity, Maria is an Associate Professor in Writing and Literature at Deakin University in Geelong. Her website is mariatakolander.com.