Caitlin Maling grew up in Western Australia, mainly in the suburbs around Fremantle. She moved to Melbourne to complete her BA in 2007, then to Cambridge to complete a Masters of Philosophy in Criminological Research. She returned to Perth and then left for Houston to complete an MFA in poetry, for which she received the WA Department of Culture and the Arts International Scholarship. Caitlin Maling's first volume of poetry, Conversations I've Never Had, won the Newcastle Poetry Prize under 35s (2014) and was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Poetry Prize and the Newcastle Poetry Prize (2014). Poems from Conversations I've Never Had were reproduced in Best Australian Poems, Australian Book Review, Westerly, Green Mountains Review, Threepenny, Australian Poetry and Meanjin, among others.