Takolander lives in Geelong, where she works as a Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies and Professional and Creative Writing at Deakin University. She has published a book of academic criticism, on South American magical realism, called Catching Butterflies: Bringing Magical Realism to Ground (2007); three books of poetry: Narcissism (2005), Ghostly Subjects (2009), and The End of the World (2014); and a book of short fiction, The Double (2013); a novel is forthcoming from Text.