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

Early life and education

Lewis was born in New Zealand on the South Island[1] before moving to the Gold Coast, Queensland.

Career

She started her journalism career as a teenager at the Gold Coast Bulletin[2] covering the crime and police beat. 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 was known for her role as a panelist, presenter, writer and producer[3] on SBS Viceland's nightly news program The Feed[4] and is an ambassador for the Australian Stroke Foundation[5] after surviving a Transient ischemic attack (TIA) when she was twenty-two.[6][7] She was the writer, researcher, host and producer of the audio documentaries Josie and the Podcats - which looked at the 2001 cult film, Josie and the Pussycats[8] - and the award-winning series The Phantom Never Dies[9] about the world’s first superhero, The Phantom. She primarily works as a screenwriter for film and television, including projects for AMC, Netflix, SBS, Ubisoft, ABC, Stan, DC Comics and many more. Her Aurealis Award and Ditmar Award-nominated short story The House That Hungers was adapted into a short film starring Kimie Tsuakoshi in the lead role, with Lewis serving as writer, director, and producer.[10]

Writing

Lewis is the author of several books and short stories. Her debut novel Who's Afraid? was published globally in 2015,[11] followed by its sequel Who's Afraid Too?. Both follow protagonist Tommi Grayson from Dundee, Scotland,[12] 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".[13] Who's Afraid Too? was nominated for an Aurealis Award in 2018 for Best Horror Novel.[14] In 2017, it was reported[15] that Who's Afraid? was optioned for television by Queensland production company Hoodlum Entertainment.[16] Her third novel It Came From The Deep[17] was published in 2017, which follows a teenager who discovers a merman living in a lake on the Gold Coast, Australia,[18] and included a narrative podcast adaptation of the same name.

Her fourth book, The Witch Who Courted Death,[19] was published in 2018 and told the origin story of Corvossier 'Casper' von Klitzing and her brother Barastin, who were both first introduced in Who's Afraid?[20] In May 2019, it won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel.[21] Her follow-up novel about a family of banshee sisters - The Wailing Woman - was the fifth book in the Supernatural Sisters series[22] and was also nominated for the Best Fantasy Novel Aurealis Award in 2020. Her sixth and seventh novels - Who's Still Afraid? and The Rose Daughter - were published in 2020 and 2021 respectively, with the latter nominated for Best Fantasy Novel at the 2022 Aurealis Awards.[23] Her Fierce Creatures was published in 2022 and is the eighth and final book to conclude the Supernatural Sisters series.[24]

Bibliography

Novels

• Who's Afraid? (Lewis: December 12, 2015: Hachette Australia) (Lewis: July 14, 2016: Piatkus UK)[25]
• Who's Afraid Too? (Lewis: Jan 21, 2017: Hachette Australia) (Lewis: July 14, 2017: Piatkus UK)[26]
• It Came From The Deep (Lewis: October 21, 2017: IngramSpark)[27]
• The Witch Who Courted Death (Lewis: October 31, 2018: Hachette Australia) (Lewis: March 9, 2019: Piatkus UK)[28]
• The Wailing Woman (Lewis: November 1, 2019: Hachette Australia) (Lewis: March 9, 2020: Piatkus UK)[29]
• Who's Still Afraid? (Lewis: October 21, 2020: IngramSpark)[30]
• The Rose Daughter (Lewis: April 6, 2021: Hachette Australia) (Lewis: October 21, 2021: Piatkus UK)[31]
• Her Fierce Creatures (Lewis: March 13, 2022: Hachette Australia) (Lewis: October 4, 2022: Piatkus UK)[32]

Short Stories

• Hot Stuff: Surfing Love (Caruso, Lewis, Sinclair. Woods: Jan 1, 2016: HarperCollins Publishers Australia)[33]
• Doing It: A Sex Positive Anthology (Pickering, Ford, Lewis et al: August 29, 2016: University Of Queensland Press)[34]
• And Then... The Great Big Book Of Awesome Adventure Tales: Volume 2 (Goodman, Lewis, Nette et al.: August 7, 2017: Clan Destine Press)[35]
• Tales From Kayfabia: The Unfortunate Origins of Jimmy Havoc Audio Short Story (Lewis: November 2, 2018: Conco and the Fudge)[36]
• The House That Hungers (Lewis: November 13, 2021: Aurealis #146)[37]
• Damnation Games (Baxter, Lee, Anderton, Lewis et al: November 1, 2022: Clan Destine Press)[38]

References