About Asha

Asha Rajan is a South Indian (Malayalee)-Australian writer and editor who lives and creates on Whadjuk Noongar boodjar, land which was never ceded. She acknowledges with respect the elders and custodians; the first storytellers, songwriters and poets of this land.

Asha was a Contributing Editor at the online writing community, YeahWrite and a judge for various Super Challenge competitions. Asha was an editor at the online literary micro-essay blog, Dead Housekeeping, from January 2015 to May 2020. She became the Managing Editor at Dead Housekeeping in May 2020.

Asha is also a freelance editor who’s interested in a wide variety of editing projects.

Publications

Prizes

Stuart and Hadow Short Story Prize 2023 (second place) | The Masters Review Reprint Prize 2023 (longlist) | The Ros Spencer Poetry Prize 2023 (accepted for publication in Brushstrokes IV) | Marj Wilke Short Story Award 2022, Women Writers Queensland (highly commended) | Society of Women Writers WA: Bronze Quill Award 2020 (winner) | Heroines Women’s Writing Prize 2020: The Neo Perennial Press (highly commended)

In Person

Upcoming:

The Motherhood Collective presents Poems from the Nest

September 21, 4:00 pm

Midland Junction Arts Centre

Past:

Perth Poetry Festival: Grains of Sand (Still Here, Still Talking) [August 30, 2025] City of Perth Library | Perth Poetry Festival: Launch of Imagik by Lakshmi Kanchi [August 30, 2025] Perth Poetry Club (Moon Café) | Hakaya of Home Fremantle [June 15, 2025] Ode to Sirens | Perth Storyfest [April 6, 2025] The University of Western Australia | Woman Scream 2025: Not a Game [March 15, 2025] Lawson Flats | Creative Connections Exhibition [October 4, 2024] The Foyer at The Rise | M/Other Tongue September 28, 2024] Blue Room Theatre (Studio) | Writers’ Collective Launch [September 5, 2024] The Blue Room Theatre (Kaos Room) | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Micro/Flash Fiction [August 2024] | Grains of Sand: A Multicultural Soiree August 24 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm WAPI Perth Poetry Festival | Pen Perth: Reading Secular India [July 27, 2024] | Iinji Film Festival: The Hardest Line (An Iinji Fundraiser) [July 20, 2024] | Centre for Stories: Onion or Ogre: Layers of Complexity Short Story Workshop [July 18, 2024] | WA Poets Inc., Grill’d to Perfection: Poets in Freo (A WA Poets Fundraiser) [April 23, 2024] | St. Catherine’s Writing Retreat, Society of Women Writers WA: Building an Online Profile [April, 2024] |Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Building an Online Submissions Profile [February, 2024] |Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Shut Up & Write x2 [October, 2023] | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Very Short Stories [September, 2023] | Coffee, Grief & Gratitude: Grief is Love Episode 12 [July 4, 2023] | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Grief Writing [April, 2023] | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Shut Up & Write! [March, 2023] | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Writing Towards Publication — Introduction to building an online writer’s submissions profile [February, 2023] | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Interviewing Shirley Eldridge ‘Basic Psychology for Writing Characters’ [February, 2023] | Coffee and Grief: Coffee Talk #39 (recorded reading) [October 6, 2022 10am AWST (UTC+8)]. Read the text of this essay here. | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Interviewing Loretta Tolnai ‘Writing Childhood Memoir'[February, 2023] | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Flash and Micro Fiction [September/October, 2022] | YeahWrite Scarlet Quill Society: “Sensitivity Readers” (panel discussion – recorded) [July, 2022] | Society of Women Writers WA, Wednesday Writing Class: Creative Non-Fiction (workshop/class) [June, 2022] | Death Rattle: “Literally Crawling” (poetry reading) [November 5, 2021] | Unchaste Readers: Unchaste Variety Show (poetry reading) [May 29, 2021]