Khairani Barokka

Khairani Barokka is the author of Indigenous Species. She is a writer, poet, and artist in London. Among her honors, she was an NYU Tisch Departmental Fellow for her Masters, Emerging Writers Festival’s (AUS) Inaugural International Writer-In-Residence, and Indonesia’s first Writer-In-Residence at Vermont Studio Center. 

Okka is the writer/performer/producer of, among others, a deaf-accessible, solo spoken word/art show, “Eve and Mary Are Having Coffee”. It premiered at Edinburgh Fringe 2014 as Indonesia’s only representative, with a grant from HIVOS. She was recognized in 2014 by UNFPA as one of Indonesia’s “Inspirational Young Leaders Driving Social Change” for “raising awareness of disability through inclusive arts”, and has been awarded six residencies, with a seventh upcoming. 

Published internationally in anthologies and journals, Okka has also presented work extensively, in nine countries, is co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press, 2017), HEAT: A Southeast Asian Urban Anthology (Buku Fixi Publishing, 2016), and is a PhD-by-practice candidate at Goldsmiths, as an LPDP Scholar in Visual Cultures. Her first full-length poetry collection, Rope, will be published by Nine Arches Press in October 2017. Her writing will feature in Tilted Axis’s forthcoming anthology Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation (edited by Dr Kavita Bhanot & Jeremy Tiang).