• Home
    • Axiomatic
    • Otherland
    • Courage
    • Traumascapes
  • Essays
  • What I've Been Up To
  • Contact
Menu

Maria Tumarkin

Street Address
City, State, Zip
Phone Number
Writer, Historian, Teacher, Translator.

Your Custom Text Here

Maria Tumarkin

  • Home
  • Books
    • Axiomatic
    • Otherland
    • Courage
    • Traumascapes
  • Essays
  • What I've Been Up To
  • Contact
Featured
'Vse Bude Ukraina: Resistance, Resilience, and Ukrainian Culture', The Wheeler Centre
Dec 17, 2023
'Vse Bude Ukraina: Resistance, Resilience, and Ukrainian Culture', The Wheeler Centre
Dec 17, 2023

Watch our event on Ukraine at The Wheeler Centre.

Read More →
Dec 17, 2023
Friday essay: Rai Gaita and the moral power of conversation, The Conversation
Nov 17, 2023
Friday essay: Rai Gaita and the moral power of conversation, The Conversation
Nov 17, 2023

Co-written with Juliet Rogers. Original title – The Rai Zone.

Read More →
Nov 17, 2023
'Filling in Time Reading Vasily Grossman While Waiting for S', Sydney Review of Books
May 10, 2023
'Filling in Time Reading Vasily Grossman While Waiting for S', Sydney Review of Books
May 10, 2023

Reading Annie Ernaux at the time of Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine.

Read More →
May 10, 2023
Withdrawal from Adelaide Writers’ Week, 2023
Feb 25, 2023
Withdrawal from Adelaide Writers’ Week, 2023
Feb 25, 2023
Read More →
Feb 25, 2023
From 'Axiomatic', Ch 5 from audiobook
Mar 10, 2022
From 'Axiomatic', Ch 5 from audiobook
Mar 10, 2022

This chapter is a conversation with my friend of 40 years Alexandra who has just escaped from Kharkiv.

Read More →
Mar 10, 2022
The Yale Review's Special Windham Campbell Issue
Dec 16, 2020
The Yale Review's Special Windham Campbell Issue
Dec 16, 2020

“On the Need for Aesthetic Wildness” + “Unethical Reading and the Limits of Empathy” in conversation with Namwali Serpell.

Read More →
Dec 16, 2020
Writers Victoria/Wheeler Centre Address
Nov 20, 2020
Writers Victoria/Wheeler Centre Address
Nov 20, 2020

Thank you to Christos Tsiolkas for the introduction I’ll never forget. Thank you to Jean Bachoura and Flatwhite Damascus for the funniest and most unsettling “warm-up act”.

Read More →
Nov 20, 2020
Windham Campbell Prizes 2020 – Non-Fiction Category Recipient (alongside Anne Boyer!!!!)
Mar 21, 2020
Windham Campbell Prizes 2020 – Non-Fiction Category Recipient (alongside Anne Boyer!!!!)
Mar 21, 2020

“My disbelief is not diminishing. Maybe because this feels like a gift of cosmic proportions. I wasn’t born into English, I am that ridiculous person who spent a near-decade writing a small book, I couldn’t even call myself a 'writer' till recently without cringing. My biggest thanks.”

Read More →
Mar 21, 2020
The Believer, Guest Critic Column, March/April 2020
Mar 1, 2020
The Believer, Guest Critic Column, March/April 2020
Mar 1, 2020

“Many people whom the world calls “survivors” reject that word’s shadowy sense of moral elevation—how it implies that they (the still-heres) survived either because there was something morally special about them or because, by virtue of their experience, they grew an extra moral gear.”

Read More →
Mar 1, 2020
Oz Gothic, Moving Sitting Ducks - Radio National Fiction
Feb 29, 2020
Oz Gothic, Moving Sitting Ducks - Radio National Fiction
Feb 29, 2020

Produced by the very brilliant Camilla Hannan.

Read More →
Feb 29, 2020
Interview with Shane Anderson, 032c Magazine
Feb 12, 2020
Interview with Shane Anderson, 032c Magazine
Feb 12, 2020

“I don’t like books that are tightly choreographed – some of it just felt right – and I didn’t want to do the manipulative, conventional thing, but I did want the book to end in nothing but one person and another person, one person’s skin and another person’s skin, one person’s memory and another person’s. Nothing else. Just that.”

Read More →
Feb 12, 2020
Brooklyn Book Festival, My Brother's Keeper, September 2019
Sep 24, 2019
Brooklyn Book Festival, My Brother's Keeper, September 2019
Sep 24, 2019

With Edwidge Danticat and David Chariandy. Moderated by Anderson Tepper.

Read More →
Sep 24, 2019
Conversation with Mireille Juchau – LA Review of Books
Sep 6, 2019
Conversation with Mireille Juchau – LA Review of Books
Sep 6, 2019

I am awe of these supremely smart, necessary, generous questions from Mireille Juchau.

Read More →
Sep 6, 2019
Interview with Kim Hill, Radio New Zealand
Apr 14, 2019
Interview with Kim Hill, Radio New Zealand
Apr 14, 2019

Kim Hill, true legend.

Read More →
Apr 14, 2019
Best Writing Award, Melbourne Prize for Literature 2018
Dec 11, 2018
Best Writing Award, Melbourne Prize for Literature 2018
Dec 11, 2018

A big thanks to Simon Warrender, the founder and director of the prize. And equally big congratulations to Alison Lester and Jamie Marina Lau.

Read More →
Dec 11, 2018
'Against Motherhood Memoirs', Dangerous Ideas about Mothers
Oct 20, 2018
'Against Motherhood Memoirs', Dangerous Ideas about Mothers
Oct 20, 2018

Extract from Dangerous Ideas about Mothers, edited by Camilla Nelson and Rachel Robertson, published in the Sydney Review of Books.

Read More →
Oct 20, 2018
'Axiomatic' at The Wheeler Centre
Oct 8, 2018
'Axiomatic' at The Wheeler Centre
Oct 8, 2018

With Melinda Harvey, Lisa West McNeice, Vanda Hamilton and Sophie Bibrowska.

Read More →
Oct 8, 2018
RN Conversations with Richard Fidler
Oct 1, 2018
RN Conversations with Richard Fidler
Oct 1, 2018
Read More →
Oct 1, 2018
'Not another diversity panel', Griffith Review (vol. 61)
Jun 14, 2018
'Not another diversity panel', Griffith Review (vol. 61)
Jun 14, 2018

“We don’t need more dialogues, we need people who can help us think.”

Read More →
Jun 14, 2018
Narrative Nonfiction at The Feminist Writers Festival
May 30, 2018
Narrative Nonfiction at The Feminist Writers Festival
May 30, 2018

With Sarah Krasnostein and Fatima Measham.

Read More →
May 30, 2018
The Wheeler Centre: This Alien Nation
May 28, 2018
The Wheeler Centre: This Alien Nation
May 28, 2018

With Vahideh Eisaei, Khalid Warsame, Hana Assafiri, Sofija Stefanovic, Alice Pung, Sam Pang and George Megalogenis.

Read More →
May 28, 2018
The Unending Absence – Melbourne's Immigration Museum
Mar 11, 2018
The Unending Absence – Melbourne's Immigration Museum
Mar 11, 2018

Speaking from inside the immigrant experience, catching times and spaces of immigration before they're squeezed, solidified into an assortment of familiar, 'tamed' narratives... A six-part audio work.

Read More →
Mar 11, 2018
In conversation with Sarah Sentilles
Mar 9, 2018
In conversation with Sarah Sentilles
Mar 9, 2018

Sarah's fourth book Draw Your Weapons is really really worth reading. We are at The Wheeler Centre talking about (perma)war, resistance, looking and not looking, the 'civil contract of photography', limits of empathy.

Read More →
Mar 9, 2018
AXIOMATIC out May 2018 from Brow Books
Dec 14, 2017
AXIOMATIC out May 2018 from Brow Books
Dec 14, 2017

The past shapes the present – they teach us that in schools and universities. (Shapes? Infiltrates, more like; imbues, infuses.) This past cannot be visited like an ageing aunt. It doesn’t live in little zoo enclosures. 

Read More →
Dec 14, 2017
A somewhat more academic look at my love for Svetlana Alexievich's books
Oct 21, 2017
A somewhat more academic look at my love for Svetlana Alexievich's books
Oct 21, 2017

From a special 'Writing and Trauma' issue of Text Journal edited by Bridget Haylock and Suzanne Hermanoczki, October 2017.

Read More →
Oct 21, 2017
Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union
Sep 5, 2017
Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union
Sep 5, 2017

I have a short piece on my family's experiences in Uzbekistan during WWII in this new collection.

Read More →
Sep 5, 2017
Chatting with heretics – 'Future Tense' on Radio National
May 14, 2017
Chatting with heretics – 'Future Tense' on Radio National
May 14, 2017

Interview with Antony Funnell on our narrative fixation.

Read More →
May 14, 2017
Language woken up
May 1, 2017
Language woken up
May 1, 2017

My extended review of Michael Green's and Andre Dao's (eds) They Cannot Take the Sky.

Read More →
May 1, 2017
Toby Litt's Mutants
Apr 17, 2017
Toby Litt's Mutants
Apr 17, 2017

Brief review in Text Journal.

Read More →
Apr 17, 2017
One F (in Hofmann) – and U-C-K the Consequences
Oct 14, 2016
One F (in Hofmann) – and U-C-K the Consequences
Oct 14, 2016

Thanks to Catriona Menzies-Pike for publishing this essay.

Read More →
Oct 14, 2016

590 Tahoe Keys Blvd, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150

POWERED BY SQUARESPACE.