Award-winning writer, director and actor Fiona Samuel MNZM has been named the 2025 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow, recognising her outstanding contribution to New Zealand’s stage and screen. The Fellowship will enable Fiona to live and write in Menton, southern France, for three months, with all expenses covered.
“The Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship will allow me to do something I’ve never done before – live and work in another country and another culture. I am excited for this opportunity for creative voyaging, and honoured to walk in the footsteps of the brilliant writers who have worked at the Villa Isola Bella over the last hundred years, most especially Katherine Mansfield herself. It’s quite something to know in advance that you are about to have an unforgettable year, and I’m grateful to the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship Committee and the New Zealand Arts Foundation for making it possible.”
Geraldine Baumann, Chair of the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship Advisory Committee, says: “Fiona Samuel’s voice has shaped the way New Zealand sees itself on screen and stage. Her ability to tell women’s stories with empathy, intelligence and wit makes her a perfect choice for the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship. We’re thrilled to see her take her craft to Menton – it feels wonderfully full circle given her connection to Katherine Mansfield through Bliss.”
Born in Scotland in 1961 to New Zealand parents and raised in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Fiona trained as an actor at Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School before discovering her true passion lay in writing and directing stories for stage and screen.
She is known for a body of work that has consistently placed the lives and experiences of women at its centre – beginning with her groundbreaking television drama series The Marching Girls (1987), featuring ten young female leads, and continuing through her solo stage hit Lashings of Whipped Cream – A Session with a Teenage Dominatrix (1993), and her celebrated theatrical adaptation of The World’s Wife (2002), staging the poems of UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
For television, Fiona has written and directed acclaimed Sunday Theatre telefeatures including Piece of My Heart (2009) and Bliss – The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield (2011), the latter earning her the distinction of being the first woman to win Best Drama Director at the New Zealand Film & Television Awards (2012).
In the last decade she has specialised in translating complex real-life stories into powerful drama, writing the screenplay for the multi-award-winning telefeature Consent: The Louise Nicholas Story (2014), and the powerful feature film Pike River (2025), starring Melanie Lynskey and Robyn Malcolm.
Fiona’s theatre work continues alongside her screen projects, with plays such as The Wedding Party (1988), One Flesh (1996), The Liar’s Bible (2004), Ghost Train (2009) – winner of the Writers Guild Award for Best Play (2010) – and most recently Helen Clark in 6 Outfits (2026), a one-woman show for two actors to be staged by Auckland Theatre Company.
She was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2019 for services to television and theatre, and was named an Arts Foundation Te Tumu Toi Laureate in 2012
