Ilka Tampke is an award-winning author, academic and teacher. Her first two novels explore the druidic culture of Ancient Britain and its disruption by Roman colonisation. Skin (2015) was published in eight countries and nominated for the Voss Literary Prize and the Aurealis Awards. Songwoman (2018) was published in five countries and won the Small Press Network Book of the Year Award in 2019.

Ilka was the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Writer in Residence in 2019 and has lectured and presented at many festivals and organisations around Australia.

She teaches creative writing at RMIT University, La Trobe University and is currently completing a PhD in Australian forest poetics at La Trobe University.

Her third novel, set in contemporary Australia, will be published by Summit Books in 2026.