Kathryn van Beek

Kathryn van Beek has an MA from Victoria University of Wellington’s International Institute of Modern Letters. She has won the Mindfood Short Story Prize and the Headland Prize, and in 2020 she released a collection of short stories, Pet, which is also available as a podcast. Kathryn was the driving force behind a recent change to New Zealand’s Holidays Act that enables people grieving miscarriage to take bereavement leave.

Articles by Kathryn van Beek:

Published in Overland Issue 244 Spring 2021

Honey babe

Kathryn van Beek

She was standing between rows of bras in Kmart when the pain came. She’d been having twinges all morning, twinges she’d put down to eating two bags of liquorice allsorts the night before, but it wasn’t that kind of pain after all, it was…appendicitis? She grabbed a handful of bras, staggered into the nearest changing room and closed the door.