Shastra Deo was born in Fiji, raised in Melbourne and lives in Brisbane. Her first book, The Agonist (UQP, 2017), won the 2016 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and the 2018 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. Her second book, The Exclusion Zone (UQP 2023), was longlisted for the 2024 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.

_{Photo credit Kate Lund}