Maria Tumarkin was born in 1974 in the former Soviet Union in a Russian Jewish family, which settled in Kharkiv - the second largest city in Ukraine. In 1989, at the time of Gorbachev's reforms, a large number of Soviet Jews were able to leave their country, and Maria's family migrated to Australia.

In 1992, less than two years after arriving in Australia, Maria bluffed her way into a Melbourne Journalism course. She was 17, could barely speak English and had not even finished Year 11. A few years later she enrolled at the University of Melbourne to study history and cultural studies and ended up completing an interdisciplinary Ph.D thesis on sites of trauma.

Maria is the author of Traumascapes. The Power and Fate of Places Transformed by Tragedy (2005), which was shortlisted in the category for a first book of history in the 2006 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards (www.traumascapes.com).

Her essays and reviews appeared in The Age, The Australian, The Monthly, Meanjin, Cultural Studies Review, New Matilda, Overland, etc. She has directed video clips as well as producing one-man shows and radio documentaries broadcast on ABC Radio National. Her new book will be published in August 2007.