Barbara Lilek, born of Polish parents spent her early years in Tanzania, East Africa, before her family migrated to Australia. She matriculated from St Mary's College, Hobart in 1961 and then studied art teaching and fine arts. Moving to Brisbane, she took up a career in town planning. In 1974 a local flood destroyed all her manuscripts and she did not write for some time.
Her poem, Sunrise, won the 1961 Tasmania-wide poetry competition conducted by The Standard; the poem Frangipanni won the 1982 Ric Norris Award for Verse in the Eaglehawk, Dahlia and Arts Festival. Her poetry was published first by Tasmanian University Literary Society in 1962. In 1987 she won the Ric Norris Award for Poetry and the Henry Lawson Award in NSW in 1988. She was runner-up in the Queensland Department of Ethnic Affairs' Poets by the River competition; and an award winner in two sections of the 1988 competition held by the Australian Writers and Authors Group (Inc). in Queensland.
Lilek has been President of the Queensland Multicultural Writers' Association. Her work has been read on Radio 4EB's Polish and Slovene programmes and she has read on numerous occasions including at Senior Citizens Week in Brisbane 1989, Refugee Week in Brisbane 1989 and 1990, the 'Fiesta' Multicultural Festival at the Migrant Resource Centre 1989, Warana Writers' Week 1989, the Queensland Multicultural Writers Annual Reading 1989 and at the 1989 Amnesty International Readings, Dunstan House, Brisbane. She was awarded the Ethnic Community Services Award Medal in 1994 for promoting greater understanding between people of different cultures.
