A young woman with wavy, shoulder-length hair that is dark at the top and red at the ends, wearing a white dress and layered necklaces, standing against a light-colored wall.

Oana Nicola is a writer, editor, and educator born in Romania and based in Brooklyn. She’s the co-poetry editor of The Brooklyn Rail and teaches creative writing workshops around the city.

Her writing appears in Fruitslice, Spectrum Journal, Tint Journal, and others. She received the 2025 CCS Spectrum Award for poetry and was a finalist for the Agnes Nixon and Kiki McCabe Screenwriting Prize in 2022.

She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, where she served as an adjunct creative writing professor and The Columbia Journal poetry editor.