Maria Lewis


Maria Lewis is an author, screenwriter, journalist and pop culture commentator from Australia.

Early life and education

Lewis was born in New Zealand on the South Island before moving to the Gold Coast, Queensland.

Career

She started her journalism career at the age of sixteen as a cadet at the Gold Coast Bulletin covering the crime and police beat for several years. Her work on pop culture has appeared in publications such as Empire Magazine, Penthouse, Junkee, New York Post, The Guardian, SFX Magazine, The Daily Mail, Film Ink, i09, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, SBS, Herald Sun, BuzzFeed, ABC, Screen Australia, WHO Weekly and Bloody Disgusting.
Lewis is best known for her role as a panelist, presenter, writer and producer on SBS Viceland's nightly news program The Feed and hosting ABC's Cleverman live after-show, Cleverfan for ABC. She is an ambassador for the Australian Stroke Foundation after surviving a Transient ischemic attack when she was twenty-two.

Writing

Lewis is the author of several books and short stories. Her debut novel Who's Afraid? was published globally in 2016, followed by its sequel Who's Afraid? Too? in 2017. Both follow protagonist Tommi Grayson from Dundee, Scotland, a female werewolf, and are supposed to be a twist on Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde as well as "examining the feminine grotesque and the idea of female monsters". Who's Afraid Too? was nominated for an Aurealis Award in 2018 for Best Horror Novel. In 2017, it was reported that Who's Afraid? was optioned for television by Queensland production company Hoodlum Entertainment. She made her Young Adult debut with It Came From The Deep, which was self-published in 2017 and follows a teenager who discovers a merman living in a lake on the Gold Coast, Australia. Her fourth book, The Witch Who Courted Death, was published on Halloween, 2018 and told the origin story of Corvossier 'Casper' von Klitzing and her brother Barastin, who were both first introduced in Who's Afraid Too? In May 2019, it won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Her follow-up novel about a family of banshee sisters - The Wailing Woman - is the fifth book in the series of interconnected stories, which each focus on different types of female monsters. It is often referred to as the 'Supernatural Sisters' series.