Nakkiah Lui is a writer/actor/director and Gomeroi/Torres Strait Islander woman. She began her playwriting career in 2013 with her first play, This Heaven (Belvoir St Theatre) and since then she has worked with every major theatre company in Australia. In 2012, Nakkiah was the inaugural recipient of both The Dreaming Award from The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Arts Board of the Australia Council and the Balnaves Foundation Indigenous Playwright Award. In 2018, Nakkiah was the recipient of the Patrick White Playwrights Fellowship at Sydney Theatre Company. In 2019, Nakkiah Lui was a winner of the NSW Premiers Literary recipient of the Nick Enright Playwriting Prize. In 2021, she was the recipient of the Russell Prize for Humour Writing for her play Black is the New White (Sydney Theatre Company).
Nakkiah is an AACTA and Logie nominated writer and actor. She was an actor/writer/director/producer of the ground-breaking series, Black Comedy, which ran for four seasons from 2014-2019. From then she went on to create/writer/star in the award-winning series, Kiki & Kitty which aired on ABC in 2017. Most recently, Nakkiah has been the co- creator/showrunner/star of the upcoming series, Preppers, as well contributing to a number of Australian and international drama and comedy series, such as Total Control and The Great.

Nakkiah has been a regular guest on ABC’s Q&A, The Drum and Channel Ten’s The Project as well as contributing to The Guardian, New York Times and a variety of other news outlets. Nakkiah is the co-host and co-creator of the award-winning podcast series, Pretty for an Aboriginal and Walkley Award nominated Debutante with Miranda Tapsell. In 2020 Nakkiah teamed with Australia’s largest independent book publisher, Allen and Unwin to launch her own imprint, JOAN.
More recently, Nakkiah is currently under an overall deal with HBO in which she exclusively writing television for them and has just released her latest podcast for Audible Australia, First Eat.