Rozanna Lilley has published prolifically as an essayist, poet, short story writer, critic and academic.
Her prose publications include the hybrid memoir, Do Oysters Get Bored? A Curious Life, which was released to significant interest and acclaim, including being shortlisted for the 2019 National Biography Award. Her creative nonfiction has been included in Best Australian Essays.
Rozanna’s poetry has been published widely, and was included in Best Australian Poetry (2015) and Best of Australian Poems (2023). Her first chapbook, The Lady in the Bottle, was published in 2023 through Black Spring Press Group in the UK.
Rozanna’s first published short story, ‘Prayer Bones’, is part of the Verge 2025 – Blue creative anthology, forthcoming from Monash University Press
In addition to Rozanna’s creative output, since the late 1980s she has published steadily as an anthropologist. In the last 20 years her qualitative research has explored the lives of autistic people and their families in diverse contexts. She holds PhDs in both Anthropology (Australian National University) and Early Childhood (Macquarie University). In 1998 her book Staging Hong Kong: Gender and Performance in Transition, an ethnography of an avant-garde performance company, was published in the UK by Curzon and in the USA by University of Hawaii Press.