Irma is an award-winning Australian author and editor of works for adults and children. Her debut novel, The Breaking, won the NSW Writers Centre Varuna Fellowship and was awarded development grants by artsACT and CAPO. It was published by MidnightSun in March 2021 to wide critical acclaim. It won a Canberra Critics Circle Award and was shortlisted for the ACT Notable Award for Fiction. Her second novel, Shift, will be out with MidnightSun in March 2025.
Irma is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward (Affirm Press), and five picture books for children, including Where the Heart Is (EK Books), which won the ACT Notable Award Children’s category, and Seree’s Story (Walker Books), which was shortlisted, then highly commended, in the ACT Notable Awards Children’s category.
Her short fiction has also been widely published in journals, including Meanjin, Island, Westerly, Review of Australian Fiction and Going Down Swinging, and in anthologies, including the tenth anniversary edition of Award Winning Australian Stories and Australian Love Stories, edited by Cate Kennedy.
Irma works full time as a freelance editor for publishers big and small, and until recently was Convener of Editing at the University of Canberra for a decade. She is also co-host of the writing podcast, Secrets from the Green Room, with Karen Viggers.