Ilka Tampke is an award-winning author of three novels.  Her first novel, Skin, was published in eight countries and nominated for the Voss Literary Prize and the Aurealis Awards in 2015. Songwoman was published in five countries and won the Small Press Network Book of the Year Award in 2019.

She teaches creative writing at RMIT University, La Trobe University and the Faber Academy, and is currently completing a PhD in forest poetics at La Trobe University. Ilka was a Glenfern Fellow in 2012 and the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre Writer in Residence in 2019. She has taught workshops and presented at many festivals and organisations around Australia.

Her latest novel, How to Love the World,  was published in May 2026.