About

Mia Timpano began her writing career in high school, where her first article (a treatise concerning Mandy Moore’s lack of talent) was banned by administration on grounds of vulgarity. For some reason, Mia was also elected student council president in her final year, collected regional trophies for public speaking, duxed French, produced a short film about a local furniture salesman which was nominated for Best Student Documentary in a number of festivals (also the ATOM awards) and adapted and directed The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis for the stage. She was also a finalist in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s competition for funniest student or something. The following year she came national runner-up in the comedy festival’s Raw Comedy competition, beating around 700 other competitors, for which she won a bunch of flowers.

Mia ended up enrolling at Melbourne University for no real reason, where she excelled for a brief period in Russian and Latin, produced a short film which used William Shatner’s head as the basis for a typeface, and also produced a complete translation of Propertius’ Elegies, before finally concentrating exclusively on writing. She assumed the role of senior writer at Frankie magazine in 2005, around the same time contributed to Men’s Style, Empire, began writing semi-regular beauty features for Russh in 2006, also contributed to Empty, SummerWinter, Pulp, T-World, LifeLounge, Jmag and other titles she can’t think of right now. In 2007, she was headhunted to be Cosmopolitan’s pop culture columnist. In 2008, she was drafted to write an autobiographical essay for the book Your Mother Would be Proud (published by Allen & Unwin, slated for release mid-2009). Also in 2008, she collaborated with Sneaker Freaker, began writing regular heavy metal features for Beat, had her work syndicated to Japanese and Romanian lifestyle magazines, was drafted to write an autobiographical essay to appear on a line of plush toys from Singapore, was also drafted to produce a regular column for Romanian magazine Republik about movie characters that interest her personally, and saw her work translated into Japanese, Romanian, Czech, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

Mia has interviewed pathological gamblers, prisoners, refugee victims of war-torture, werewolves, some semi-decent movie directors, a few Z-grade celebrities and some competitive eaters, who were cool. She has also guest lectured a few of times, the most memorable being for Swinburne University’s school of media, alongside the executive producer of Deal or No Deal.

In 2006, she launched a side-project zine Nerds Gone Wild! with a budget of precisely zero dollars. It somehow attracted a global distribution deal with Borders and SelectAir in less than a year. She was profiled for this in The Age, The Melbourne Times, Duke, Vertigo and Geek Monthly (US). Also it was a finalist in the category of “Best Print Media” in the 2008 Desktop Awards. Also it has attracted serialisation agreements with TokyoPop and the publishers of Shakespeare manga in the UK.

Mia was selected to guest host 3RRR fm’s “Respect the Rock” in late-2007, took over hosting and production in summer 2008, conducted a backstage interview with Machine Head lead guitarist Phil Demmel in which she brought him to tears, also interviewed Yngwie Malmsteen, Down, Meshuggah, Rocket Science, Hunters & Collectors, blah blah, also had a pretty lively conversation Primitive Calculators, which was chosen for archiving and dissemination in 3RRR fm’s “Best of Music Interviews” podcast.

In 2009, Mia was chosen to star in Renegade Productions’ “Dancing About Architecture”, a music criticism TV program, alongside irresistible co-hosts Clem Bastow and Tim Finney. Also she was drafted as a scriptwriter for Fremantle Media.

Mia is currently completing her first novel, which is really hilarious, and beginning work on a book about European metal festivals, for which she is teaching herself Swedish, which will make her whatever five times lingual is.

Fun with facts

• Mia’s family intended to immigrate to America, but due to their illiteracy inadvertently ticked the box labeled “Australia”.
• Mia’s father, an architect, was responsible for designing several Melbourne landmarks, including the gates of Chinatown.
• Mia’s lifelong best friend is the former games producer of Wheel of Fortune.
• Mia lives in a converted pharmaceutical warehouse, opposite a prison graveyard.

Fun with quotes

Mia: “I don’t think I’m cynical because I’m not. I think people assume I’m cynical because I’m very critical of bullshit, but actually that proves that I’m not cynical. If I were cynical I wouldn’t care. I do care, and that’s why I’m critical. We need people to be critical of bullshit, so people will care about this world, which is full of bullshit. And I don’t consider it my job as a columnist to talk about shoes or cats or the piece of toast I ate for breakfast.”

– Vertigo magazine profile story, “Mamma Mia” 2008

“Writers raised on a diet of print still hold a fierce contempt for online journalists. A recent discussion on Melbourne music journalism TV show Dancing About Architecture began with print critic Mia Timpano describing the web as ‘the toilet bowl of human thought’.”

–  Mess+Noise feature story, “Tales Tall and True” 2009