kbarokka [at] gmail [dot] com / Bluesky: @mailbykite.bsky.social
Okka is represented by Abi Fellows at DHH Literary Agency. abi [dot] fellows [at] dhhliteraryagency [dot] com
BIO:
Khairani Barokka (b. 1985) is a writer, artist, arts consultant, translator and editor from Jakarta. Okka’s work has been presented widely internationally, in dozens of countries, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis, environmental justice, and access as translation. She regularly lectures, judges, mentors, and consults for arts organisations, and has a PhD by Practice in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London, on an LPDP Scholarship, and a Masters from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she was a Departmental Fellow and Scholar. Among her honours, she has been a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, Emerging Writers Festival’s Inaugural Writer-in-Residence, a Delfina Foundation Associate Artist, an Artforum Must-See, and the first non-British Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing.
She was the first Poet-in-Residence at Modern Poetry in Translation, later co-edited their Body Issue, and eventually became the magazine’s first non-British Editor. Barokka’s work has appeared in GRANTA, Poetry Review, The Rialto, Ambit, Magma, Wasafiri, Stand, The New Inquiry, Asymptote, and many other publications, and she has also co-edited Massachusetts Review’s Disability Justice Issue. In 2023, Okka was longlisted for the Loewe/Studio Voltaire Arts Award, and shortlisted for the Asian Women of Achievement Awards in the Arts and Culture Category.
Her commissions have included the ICA, Wellcome Collection, Jakarta Biennale, Southbank Centre, and Serpentine Galleries. She has also been featured widely in national and international media, including on BBC Radio 2's The Arts Show, BBC’s The Cultural Frontline, ABC Australia, The Hindu, The Times of India, and all major Indonesian newspapers and media.
Her books include Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, as co-editor), Rope (Nine Arches), Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the 2022 Barbellion Prize, and 2024’s amuk (Nine Arches). Her nonfiction debut, Annah, Infinite, is forthcoming from Tilted Axis Press in 2025.
Picture in black and white of Okka writing in Indonesian on a paper floor with a pen. She’s wearing a patterned black and batik dress, with short hair and black and silver earrings. If you’re using this image, kindly credit photographer Derrick Kakembo.