Maria Tumarkin is an Australian cultural historian. She is also the author of four idea books: Traumascapes (2005), Courage (2007), Otherland (2010), and Axiomatic (2018).
She has taught at universities and writing centers and is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural history at the University of Melbourne.
She moved to Australia from Russia when she was fifteen years old. She mentioned in her interviews that when she first arrived in Australia, she felt as if nothing connected her to the country or the language. So it wasn’t just a sense of cultural dislocation; everything around her was cold and abstract, as if she was in space.
And now, she is an Australian cultural historian, essayist, and novelist.
Who Is Maria Tumarkin? Wikipedia Bio Of Australian Cultural Historian
Maria Tumarkin is an Australian cultural historian and writer. She is a Ukrainian-Jewish-Australian writer born and raised in Kharkiv.
She is currently an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne’s School of Culture and Communication. She is the author of three critically acclaimed books of ideas: Traumascapes, Courage, Otherland, and Axiomatic, all of which were nominated for literary awards.
Maria’s book, Traumascapes (MUP), was nominated for a Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards prize for the first book of history in 2006.
She won the Melbourne Prize for Literature’s Best Writing Award in 2018 for her latest work, Axiomatic, recognized for its clarity, originality, and creativity.
Axiomatic uses five well-known axioms as framing devices for a collection of essays, such as time heals all wounds, that interrogate and expose their flaws through a weaving of history, psychology, interviews, and genuine human stories.
Tumarkin’s essays have appeared in Griffith Review, Meanjin, The Monthly, Sydney Review of Books, The Age, The Australian, and Inside Story.
She works in various artistic collaborations with visual artists, theater makers, and audio designers.
She was a Sidney Myer Creative Fellow in Humanities from 2013 to 2014, and she serves on the programming committee of the Melbourne Writers Festival.
Prior to that, from 2008 to 2010, she was a Research Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology. She worked on the international project ‘Social Memory and Historical Justice’ at Swinburne University.
She received her Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne in Contemporary History, Cultural Studies, and Trauma Studies.
Maria Tumarkin’s Husband
Maria Tumarkin is married to her husband. The family lives together in Melbourne.
The Yale Review, however, mentions her three children. Her eldest daughter is twenty-five years old, and her two brothers are fifteen and three, respectively, according to Yale Review in 2020.
She mentioned that about half of her quarter-century as a parent was spent as a single mother. She is now in the first genuinely satisfying relationship of her life. Her family was first-generation Australian immigrants. To make ends meet, her engineering mother cleaned the homes of wealthy women.
At first, she was itching to get out and had some grand plans to leave Australia, but her first pregnancy thwarted those. Thirty years later, she’s settled, more or less uncomfortably, into the role of settler Australian.
She is finally married to her perfect partner, who took care of her a-year-old son as she wrote this piece in Yale review. She has written a book, Otherland: A Journey With My Daughter, where she returns to Russia and Ukraine with her Australian-born teenage daughter, Billie. She aimed to witness firsthand the seismic shifts in her family’s native country.
Otherland is the story of a six-week journey through three generations and three stories of mothers and daughters that are vastly different but deeply interconnected.
Billie and Maria appeared in When Women Speak of War, an event co-curated by Maria for FOJAM [the Festival of Jewish Arts and Music] in April 2022. They were part of a project that linked WWII and the war in Ukraine, with Billie singing Ukrainian and Yiddish songs.
Maria Tumarkin’s Net Worth In 2022
Maria Tumarkin is an Australian Cultural Historian who has a net worth of $1 million.
She makes her living by teaching creative writing at the University of Melbourne. According to Au.indeed, the average University of Melbourne Associate Professor’s annual salary in Australia is approximately $154,619, which is 7% higher than the national average.
She revealed that she was classified as “middle class” and has been financially secure since turning forty. She is fortunate for a job at a university where she teaches in the creative writing program.
In addition to her teaching profession, she is also the author of four award-winning books. Maria was awarded the $165,000 Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction in 2020.
Maria was awarded $30,000 for her acclaimed nonfiction work, Axiomatic, in 2018. Her novel and the prize money she received further replenish her income.
- She was also shortlisted for several awards, such as;
- Stella Prize
- Prime Minister’s Literary Awards
- Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards
- New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards
- Australian Indie Book Awards