About Sheila Ngọc Phạm

Hi, I’m a writer, researcher, editor, producer and curator. I am the inaugural Imago Fellow at the State Library of NSW, undertaking archival research about Anne Spencer Parry and Australian speculative fiction for young people during the 70s to 90s. My other role this year is Research Officer at the Reproduction and Perinatal Centre at The University of Sydney, based at Westmead Hospital. My PhD on women's experiences of gestational diabetes mellitus and online communities was conferred in April 2025.

Anyone who knows me knows how active I am across different domains. Recently this included managing a parliamentary group focused on sexual and reproductive health and international development; curating MÌNH at Fairfeld City Museum and Gallery; being co-Artistic Director of Addi Road Writers' Festival; co-leading The Finishing School writing collective; serving on the Advisory Board of Sydney Review of Books; volunteering for the P&C of my children's public school and being a member of the Consumer and Community Participation Network at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital.

My creative work is rooted in my desire to make sense of the  fragmented history I've inherited and being part of a diaspora. What it means to be Vietnamese is, as I wrote in an essay, “one of the great rhetorical questions of my life.” I suppose I relate most to what Elif Shafak refers to as “multiple belongings”. This is why I can often be found hanging out in the borderlands of identities, ideas and disciplines.

I'm an experienced facilitator of public conversations - in the last few years I've chaired talks for Waverley Library, Sydney Writers' Festival, Fairfield City Museum and Gallery,  SXSW Sydney and OzAsia Festival. I'm a regular guest on radio and podcasts, with recent appearances on SBS Vietnamese, Late Night Live, Big Ideas, Getting Lit, A Seat at Our Table, and The Vietnamese.

I live on Dharug land in south-west Sydney with my husband and two kids, and have spent most of my life in the City of Canterbury-Bankstown. It was a great honour to be awarded Citizen of the Year in the Australia Day Awards on 24 January 2025.

Photo by Joy Lai for the State Library of NSW.

Bowstrings

Writer
My writing is regularly published in mainstream media outlets as well as literary and boutique publications. It is widely recognised and has been listed for various national awards including the Neilma Sidney Short Story Prize 2023 (runner-up), Woollahra Digital Literary Award 2021 (finalist) and Walkley-Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism 2021 (finalist). A few years ago I started venturing into screen-based writing work; this included being a storyliner on The Heights and contributing to two other scripted series in development. I received significant funding from Create NSW and Creative Australia to work on an original mainstage play, which I'm currently in the middle of revising.

Editor
I've worked as an editor in a range of professional settings, including at the ABC, where I was Editor of ABC Pool. These days my editing work is more literary in nature: I co-edited the Vietnam Showcase on Kill Your Darlings and I'm a contributing editor to diaCRITICS, the online journal of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network. I'm currently a freelance editor for the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development.

Producer
My producing work focuses on events as well as documentary for audio and screen. For radio, this producing has primarily been for ABC Radio National, including an award-winning five-part series on multilingualism called Tongue Tied and Fluent (2019) and two full-length features for radio, The Lost Cinema of Tan Hiep (2017) and Saigon's Wartime Beat (2012). Most recently, I co-produced the SBS podcast series, My Bilingual Family (2022). My first co-produced short documentary, connectIRL, premiered at the Sydney Opera House’s Antidote Festival in 2019.

Scholar
My academic qualifications include undergraduate degrees in psychology and linguistics, and a major in history and philosophy of science. I have masters degrees in both public health and bioethics. I recently completed a PhD at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation on women’s experiences of gestational diabetes and how online support groups intersect with formal healthcare.

Curator
My curation practice for more than a decade has been primarily focused on talks, including live interviews and panels. I've also branched out to exhibitions, beginning in 2019 when I curated an exhibition of Vietnamese traditional art for the State Library of NSW following on from my research into the archives of Len Fox and Mona Brand at the Mitchell Library. I curated MÌNH at Fairfield City Museum & Gallery in 2023.

Communications consultant
I have more than two decades of experience working in communications for non-government, government and commercial concerns. I still do a bit of consulting from time to time and am particularly interested in communications work relating to public health and healthcare.

Languages & Me

Languages are an important part of my life, so much so that I wanted to devote a small section of my website to discuss this. My lifelong fascination with languages led me to a degree in linguistics as well as travel and other language-related experiences. I've talked about my experiences with language on a number of ABC Radio programs (e.g. Found in Translation) and an episode of the Language Chats podcast back in 2022.

Vietnamese is my mother language as my family is from Vietnam. My current challenge is trying to raise my own kids bilingually in Vietnamese and English. It’s a real struggle, which is why I founded an online community on Facebook called Vietnamese Bilingual Parenting with 5,500 members from around the world. I am currently undertaking weekly lessons in Vietnamese with a tutor to improve my language skills.

English is my dominant and most fluent language because I was born and raised in Australia. It’s the only language I know how to write in.

French I learned for a year in high school and later in France, including a summer in Paris. I can still understand and read a little. Although I loved learning French, and still do, I have long felt conflicted about this given the colonial relationship between France and Vietnam. But that history is what makes me feel comfortable with it as well.

Thai entered my linguistic repertoire because I lived and worked in Chiang Mai. I had twice-weekly private lessons for over a year. I've forgotten most of it now but recently found I could understand parts of the Thai dialogue on White Lotus. I can still read Thai restaurant menus too.

Dutch and Italian I know a little because I spent a year living in Belgium, The Netherlands and Italy while studying. I've also taken courses in Chinese and Spanish, so traces of those languages exist in my head too.