5 Questions with Olivia De Zilva
Olivia De Zilva is a writer based in Kaurna Yerta (Adelaide).
Her novel Plastic Budgie was released in July 2025 by Pink Shorts Press. Her novella Eggshell will be released by Spineless Wonders in November 2025. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in The Guardian, SBS, Australian Poetry Journal, Mascara Literary Review and many other publications.
Olivia's writing has been shortlisted by the Richell Prize, the Kat Muscat Fellowship, the Deborah Cass award and was the inaugural winner of the AAWP Novella Prize. She co-runs Opinionated, a literary collective for women of colour based in Kaurna Yerta.
No.1
How did you first identify as a writer and how has that identity evolved since then?
I first identified as a writer when I was diagnosed with selective mutism as a child and could only communicate with the written word. I made astute observations about the world in the back of an exercise book and collated them for my first ‘novel’—a bunch of A4 paper stapled together.
Since then, I’ve still been fascinated with the idea of ‘voice’ and have tried to find that in my work. What makes a voice? What is authenticity? These questions have guided my identity as a writer. I would say my identity has evolved to a place where voice is everything. I’ve tried to write things in a way that I perceive would be popular or more ‘publishable’, but have determined that fostering and embracing my natural voice is actually what works best.
I’ve also always had this strange symbiosis with celebrity culture: from the news stands at the shops and on TV shows like Entertainment Tonight. I think it was because I was a bit of a lonely child and found that those voices were just enough to fill the void. I would create my own gossip magazines and follow this thread of drama and intrigue. As I’ve evolved in my practice, I found that these pop culture pulls and connections really allowed to explore my own work and trauma through the eyes of an observer (i.e., reading a magazine, scrolling on Twitter, listening to podcasts). In almost all of my work, they act as a sort of intertextuality which I think is really important—especially when one can’t be forthright or really earnest with their emotions. So I would say my identity has kind of evolved into an authentic observer—not too far in, but just with enough sense of self that the stories don’t sound phony.
No.2
Plastic Budgie was published with Pink Shorts Press, a new independent publisher based in Adelaide/Kaurna Yerta where you live. What do you think are the benefits of publishing with a small indie press compared to a larger one?
Working with indie press is an interesting and really rewarding experience. Of course, you’re not going to get the same amount of coverage or interest as you would when working with a bigger publisher, so you do have to get creative. I really enjoyed this challenge because it meant I had to dauntingly ‘put myself out there’.
That meant talking to people, going to events, submitting to things—stuff I’d kind of put off in the past. I also found that working with an indie press encouraged me to really find and lean on my community, who have been nothing short of supportive and astonishing; they’ve really fought hard for me. I would have never been so involved with the literary community in Kaurna Yerta had it not been for working with an independent press, so for that, I am extremely grateful. To find a sense of kinship and place in an industry that can sometimes be quite isolating and cliquey is really unique. Speaking of support, I feel like I’ve been a bit spoiled with the amount of face-time I’ve been able to spend with my editor too. The relationship we cultivated really transcended the page, and I was able to create a story that I never would have imagined because of her kindness, generosity of time and championing of me. I’m not sure I would have been able to find that had I worked with a larger publisher. I was really able to be myself, and not editorialised to suit commerciality or sales. As I said above, finding a voice, being authentic, loud and proud is something that I really strive for and I was really able to accomplish it because of publishing with Pink Shorts Press.
No.3
You’ve said in another interview that the seed for Plastic Budgie came from a creative nonfiction essay published in Liminal in 2022, part of the ‘Haunt’ digital chapbook series. How did you craft it later from an (auto)fiction perspective?
That’s right. The prompt for that piece was really fascinating and allowed me to do a lot of thinking about intergenerational traumas, gifts and ghosts—not all bad, of course. From writing that piece, I realised that voices and memories can be shared, but also kind of manipulated, reformed and evolved.
I really liked this experimental way of considering my family and my own experiences and found that it made for an interesting narrative. From that original piece, I considered haunting more broadly and wanted to write a metaphysical experience of my own life where I was trapped in different dimensions, with different voices echoing across time and space continuums. That original piece really pushed me to be creative, but also bold, and embrace trauma and memory in a way that felt authentic—kind of dishonest, with broken nostalgia and nodding to my own cultural heritage—to me. In western culture, life is seen chronologically with a beginning and end. In Asian culture, we reincarnate, live on as spirits, and are more superstitious—writing that original piece really allowed me to appreciate that.
No.4
There are many funny lines and moments in Plastic Budgie. What’s the role of humour in your creative process?
Humour is everything. I’d rather make people laugh than make them cry. In the book, I obviously document some tricky events and incidents during my adolescence, and going back through them as an adult was difficult. I found that humour was a really good way to keep myself protected from some of the harder, heart-breaking stuff, allowing me to cope, grieve and work through things in a way that I could understand and absorb. I’m not a crier, [and perhaps] never will be, which maybe is a shame, but I do love a laugh, and I find that humour is a wonderful way to let my true voice come through.
No.5
What’s the most surprising thing you learned about yourself or your practice while in the midst of writing Plastic Budgie?
I think just how experimental I can be. This book evolved so much over the past year and it was because of how liberated I became. I never thought that I could be as experimental and unorthodox with my writing, so it was honestly a great surprise. I really enjoyed learning this about my practice and will definitely let the writing take the reins in future. It’s sometimes fun not to go into everything with a plan or rigid structure. It was honestly the hardest, but most rewarding experience, and I’m really glad to have learned so much from it.
Find Out More
‘There was no use googling am I cursed because the search engine algorithm would always say yes.’
Olivia was named after a lycra-clad singer her parents saw on Rage. As a child, she lost the ability to speak and spent a year barking like a dog. Her Gong Gong bought her a yellow bird in a shoebox from the Adelaide Central Markets. Her heart was broken by a guitar teacher after a school disco. She started university and learnt to run and travelled to Guangzhou for her cousin’s wedding.
In her brutally funny, genre-defying debut, Olivia De Zilva collects stories on shelves: neat coming-of-age anecdotes and sitcom characters trapped behind glass.
Then she breaks it all apart.
Plastic Budgie questions how our memories and families form us, in a way that is both unapologetically sentimental and eternally surprising. It is full of itchy Y2K nostalgia, curses and glimpses of birds.
Get it from Pink Shorts Press here.