Kathryn van Beek | |
---|---|
Born | Kathryn Elizabeth van Beek 1980 (age 43–44) Christchurch, New Zealand |
Education | Victoria University of Wellington (MA) |
Occupations |
|
Awards | Robert Burns Fellowship (2023) |
Kathryn Elizabeth van Beek (born 1980) is a New Zealand short story writer, playwright, children's writer, illustrator and musician. Following an early career as a playwright, van Beek has since written and illustrated two children's books about her kitten Bruce and published a number of short stories for adults. She has also advocated for women who have experienced miscarriage and written on this topic. In 2023 she received the Robert Burns Fellowship.
Van Beek was born in Christchurch in 1980. [1] [2] She holds a bachelor's degree in writing for theatre from Unitec and a master's degree in scriptwriting from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, completed in 2002. [1] [3] In 2001 she won the Playmarket Young Playwrights Award and received a Mercury Theatre Trust scholarship. [1]
In 2002, her play French Toast was the winner of the central region prize at the Playmarket Young Playwrights' Competition, and won Best Theatre at the New Zealand Fringe Festival. [4] [5] [6] That year she established the production company 3girls6legs together with Natalie Hitchcock and Pia Midgley, and in 2003 they presented her play For Georgie. [1] She was the bassist and singer-songwriter for the band Peachy Keen until it disbanded in 2005. [1] [7]
In 2018 she wrote and illustrated Bruce Finds a Home, a children's book based on her experience finding and adopting a one-day old kitten. [8] She had originally set up a Facebook page to relate Bruce's activities. [9] The book sold well and a sequel, Bruce Goes Outside, was published in 2020. [8]
Van Beek also writes short stories for adults. She received the 2015 Headland journal prize for her short story "Frangipani". [10] Her short story "Emotional Support Animal" won third place in the Sunday Star-Times short story competition in 2018. [11] In 2020, she published a collection of short stories for adults, Pet. [8] A review in The New Zealand Herald called it "both charming and brutal". [12]
In 2020 van Beek wrote Misconceptions, a 10-part web documentary series for The New Zealand Herald about miscarriage. [13] She is one of three editors of the planned essay collection Otherhood, featuring essays by people who are not mothers and due for publication in 2024. [14] [15]
In 2023, she was awarded the Robert Burns Fellowship. [16] She said she intended to use her time on the residency to write a second collection of short stories. [17] During her residency she judged the University of Otago's annual creative writing competition. [18]
In 2021, following van Beek writing to her local MP and starting a petition that attracted 7,000 signatures, New Zealand's law was changed to entitle women and their partners to bereavement leave after experiencing miscarriage. [19] [20] [21]
She is a cousin of playwright and actress Jackie van Beek. [4]
Oscar Vai To'elau Kightley is a Samoan-New Zealander actor, television presenter, writer, journalist, director, and comedian. He acted in and co-wrote the successful 2006 film Sione's Wedding.
Madeleine Nalini Sami is a New Zealand actor, director, comedian and musician. She started her acting career in theatre before moving to television, where she created, co-wrote, and starred in Super City. She co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the 2018 film The Breaker Upperers, along with Jackie van Beek, which was a New Zealand box office success. Sami co-hosted The Great Kiwi Bake Off.
Sarah Thomson is a New Zealand actress, known for playing roles in two series of the Power Rangers franchise, for her role in New Zealand's longest running soap opera, Shortland Street, and for playing a lead role in puppet show The Moe Show.
Hone Vivian Kouka is a New Zealand playwright. He has written 13 plays, which have been staged in New Zealand and worldwide including Canada, South Africa, New Caledonia and Britain. Kouka's plays have won multiple awards at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards, the 'Oscars' of New Zealand theatre. Kouka has also worked as a theatre director and producer. In 2009, Kouka was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to contemporary Māori theatre.
Vaosa ole Tagaloa Makerita Urale is a documentary director and playwright, and a leading figure in contemporary Polynesian theatre in New Zealand. She has produced landmark productions in the performing arts. She is the writer of the play Frangipani Perfume, the first Pacific play written by a woman for an all-female cast. Working in different art mediums, Urale also works in film and television. She is the director of the political documentary Children of the Revolution that won the Qantas Award (2008) for Best Māori Programme.
Briar Grace-Smith is a screenwriter, director, actor, and short story writer from New Zealand. She has worked as an actor and writer with the Maori theatre cooperative Te Ohu Whakaari and Maori theatre company He Ara Hou. Early plays Don't Call Me Bro and Flat Out Brown, were first performed at the Taki Rua Theatre in Wellington in 1996. Waitapu, a play written by Grace-Smith, was devised by He Ara Hou and performed by the group on the Native Earth Performing Arts tour in Canada in 1996.
Renée Gertrude Taylor, known professionally as Renée, was a New Zealand feminist writer, playwright, novelist and short story writer. She started writing plays in her 50s, with her first play, Setting the Table, written in 1981, and with her most well-known works being the trilogy of plays beginning with Wednesday to Come (1984). Renée described herself as a "lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals", and her plays feature strong female characters who are often working class.
Fiona Farrell is a New Zealand poet, fiction and non-fiction writer and playwright.
Vivienne Christiana Gracia Plumb is New Zealand poet, playwright, fiction writer, and editor.
Philippa Hall is a New Zealand stage, screen and radio script writer and actor.
Sam Brooks is a New Zealand playwright and dramatist. Brooks' works have appeared on stage in Auckland and throughout New Zealand, often produced through his company, Smoke Labours Productions. Brooks' work has twice earned him the Playmarket B4 25 New Zealand Young Playwright award. He has also been nominated for the Chapman Tripp award for Outstanding New Playwright and was highly commended for the Adam New Zealand New Play of the year award. In 2014, Metro Magazine named Brooks "Auckland's Most Exciting Playwright". He won the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award in 2016. He currently works as the culture editor at The Spinoff, an online commentary and opinion magazine. He has also written for the Pantograph Punch, Metro Magazine, and the NZ Herald.
Stuart Hoar is a New Zealand playwright, teacher, novelist, radio dramatist and librettist.
Virginia Ruby Andersen is a New Zealand politician. She has been a Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives for the Labour Party since the 2017 New Zealand general election.
Stephanie Patricia Johnson is a poet, playwright, and short story writer from New Zealand. She lives in Auckland with her husband, film editor Tim Woodhouse, although she lived in Australia for much of her twenties. Many of her books have been published there, and her non-fiction book West Island, about New Zealanders in Australia, is partly autobiographical.
Jackie van Beek is a New Zealand film and television director, writer and actress.
Emily Tess Duncan is a New Zealand playwright. She is co-founder of Prospect Park Productions, an organisation aiming “to create and produce original New Zealand theatre and collaborative projects that reach into other art forms." Duncan held the 2019 Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. She lives in Dunedin.
The Bruce Mason Playwriting Award is an annual award that recognises the work of an outstanding emerging New Zealand playwright. The winner is decided by the votes of a panel of leading New Zealand artistic directors and script advisors.
Iona Winter is a New Zealand writer specialising in hybrid fiction, poetry and short fiction.
Bronwyn Margaret Elsmore is a New Zealand fiction and non-fiction writer and playwright. She was a senior lecturer in religion at Massey University from the late 1980s until 2005, and has written a number of works about religion in New Zealand.