About
Lesh Karan is a poet, writer and editor. Her work has appeared in Best of Australian Poems, Cordite, Island, Meanjin, Overland, Rabbit, Strange Horizons and other publications. She has won the Liquid Amber Poetry Prize and been shortlisted for the Judith Wright and South Coast Writers Centre poetry awards. A former pharmacist, Lesh holds a Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing from the University of Melbourne, and a Certificate IV in Professional Writing and Editing from RMIT. Of Indo Fijian descent, she lives in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia, on unceded Wurundjeri land.
Prizes & Mentions
finalist, 2025 Myths & Fables Prize, Frontier Poetry
Flights of Denim, longlisted 2025 Liquid Amber Prize
Rhizoming, shortlisted 2025 South Coast Writers Centre Poetry Competition
2024 Red Room Emerging Poets in Residence, shortlisted: “The judges were deeply impressed by Lesh’s playfulness with form and language as she deftly mixes registers between Hindi and English to interrogate the theme of being ‘not one thing’ from the positionality of a brown female poet.”
Twenty-one+ Answers to Your Question, winner 2023 Liquid Amber Prize: “Lesh’s wonderful poem […] evokes with startling and vivid imagery the many places, factors, words and experiences of mind and senses that make s who we are.” — Anne M. Carson, Rose Lucas & Reneé Pettitt-Schipp (judges)
tinnitus as hushing haibun, shortlisted 2022 Judith Wright Poetry Prize
Lesh Karan 