Paula Boock is an award-winning screen writer and producer whose credits include children’s drama, factual and prime-time drama such as The Strip, The Insiders Guide to Happiness and The Insiders Guide to Love. As one half of Lippy Pictures with Donna Malane, she has written and produced several ‘Sunday Theatre’ telefeatures, including Tangiwai, Field Punishment No.1 and Jean. The latter, based on the life of aviator Jean Batten and directed by Robert Sarkies, took out all 12 categories in the 2017 NZTV Awards and an unprecedented 9World Medal Awards at the 2017 New York TV & Film Awards. Most recently she and Donna have written and produced the multi-season NZ/German crime dramaseries The Gulf.
Prior to screenwriting Paula was a publisher, playwright and YA novelist, winning the NZ Children’s Book Award for her ground-breaking queer novel Dare Truth or Promise. She has held the Burns Fellowship at The University of Otago and the Writer in Residence at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Her play Song of the Shirt was published along with those by Renée and Fiona Farrell in the collection The Song of the Shirt, Three One-Act Plays for Young Actors (McIndoe 1993).