Hemat Malak is an accountant and poet based in Picton, NSW. After early recognition for her spiritual writing—earning finalist placements in international awards a decade ago—she has returned to her first love: poetry. Her work explores life’s tensions, from the sense of loss to the search for meaning, with a voice shaped by both lived experience and control of language.

In 2025, Hemat won the Bruce Dawe National Poetry Prize and received both a Best New Poets and a Pushcart Prize nomination. That same year, she was shortlisted for the ACU Prize for Poetry and the Robert Gray Prize, longlisted for both the Liquid Amber and Ros Spencer Poetry Prizes, and won the Fisher’s Ghost Writing Prize, as well as being named a local winner in the WestWords Living Stories competition.

Her poetry has been widely published in journals and anthologies, including Rattle, Rochford Street Review, Catchment Literary Journal, Locative Magazine, Short Stories Unlimited, and collections from 5 Islands Press, One Art, WestWords and WA Poets. Hemat has also served as a judge for local writing competitions.

Her debut poetry collection, From These Empty Shelves, will be published by 5 Islands Press in 2026.