About

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist. She holds a Masters in English and is a member of Sydney's North Shore Poetry Collective. She was a founding editor of the Sydney-based literary journal Authora Australis.

Her debut poetry collection, Patchwork Fugue, was published by Atomic Bohemian Press (UK) in February 2024. Her micro-chapbook A Second Life in Eighty-Eight Keys won the Little Black Book competition in 2024 and was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press (UK).

An award-winning writer and performer, Oormila is a four-time poetry slam champion (2025), including wins at the Bankstown Poetry Slam during Sydney Writers' Festival and the Enough Said Poetry Slam Wollongong. She won the Winged Muse Poetry Competition in the Netherlands (March 2025), the Don Bank Short Fiction Cup twice (2024, 2025) and the Curator's Award 2025 Grieve Anthology, Hunter Writers Center. She was long-listed for the Dai Fry Memorial Prize for Mystical Poetry in Wales (2022) and named a finalist in the Glass House Poetry Awards.

In July 2025, she had the honour of reading her poems as part of the Oxford Poetry Circle at the Oxford Festival of the Arts, Magdalen College School, Oxford.

Her poetry has been published in over 70 journals internationally, including Cordite Poetry Review, Black Bough Poetry (UK), FemAsia Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and Sidhe Press (Germany). She has received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Her visual art has graced the covers of more than 25 literary magazines across 10 countries, including Yale Divinity School, Two Thirds North, Thimble Literary Magazine, and Pithead Chapel. She is also the author of three digital micro-chapbooks published by Origami Poems Project (US).

Her second full length collection of poems will be published in 2026 by 5 Islands Press.

Raised in the Middle East, Oormila's work explores the intersections of memory, diaspora, and the sacred ordinary. She draws on her multicultural heritage to create poetry and visual art that traverse borders and languages. She lives and works in New South Wales on the traditional lands of the Eora Nation.

When she's not teaching, writing, or painting, she enjoys cooking from scratch, and balances life as a wife and mum (to both her kids and her cat).

Connect: Twitter @oormilaprahlad | Instagram @oormila_paintings