Nirmala Pillai is an ex Civil Service officer and is now a full time writer and painter. She has published stories and two volumes of Poems in English, ‘Burning drops’ and ‘After the silence’. She has published number of short stories in English in leading English magazines like ‘India Literature’ of Sahitya Academy, Kavya Bharti, Asian Age, The Telegraph, PEN, The Little magazine, Femina, Eve’s monthly, The Heritage Magazine, Cha, an Asian Literary journal from Hong Kong, Poetry Southwest ,UK, BareRoot Review Minnesota University, Foundling Review USA, etc
She received the first prize in the short story competition conducted by Femina. Another story in 2005 was shortlisted for the South Asian Award by the Little magazine and published in their ‘anthology Expressions’. Another poem was also shortlisted in the poetry competition conducted by British Council–Unisun Publication. Her first collection of SHORT STORIES called SINGING EARTH was released in the 2015 INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR in Delhi.
She has held painting exhibitions at India International Centre and Maurya Sheraton (Delhi), Lalit Kala Academy (Chennai), Nehru Centre (Mumbai), Chitram Gallery (Kochi), Trivandrum Museum Gallery, Kalaghoda Mumbai Museum Gallery, India Habitat centre New DELHI, AIFACS gallery, Hudco art gallery, CSOI GALLERY in New Delhi. Her paintings are in private and institutional collections.