Kathryn van Beek is a multi-award-winning playwright who has had her work staged across New Zealand, primarily through the theatre company 3girls6legs. She has a BA major in writing for theatre from UNITEC and a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the IIML. She writes scripts, nonfiction, short stories, and books for children. She has been the winner of the Headland Prize, the Mindfood Short Story Prize, and the Playmarket Young Playwright Award. Kathryn is a fiction reader for takahē magazine and has written several zines, a podcast, a web series, and a number of articles for outlets such as The Spinoff.
In 2021 her story Sea Legend appeared in the anthology Middle Distance, published by Te Herenga Waka University Press, and two other stories were published in Takakē magazine and Turbine Kapohau.
Kathryn is also working towards a doctorate on the topic of using writing to make positive social change. In 2022 she was elected as the Otago and Southland Branch delegate for the NZSA.