Catherine Banks

Catherine Banks was inspired to begin writing plays after she saw a production of Michel Tremblay’s Les Belles-Soeurs. Plays by Catherine Banks have been performed across Canada, USA and Catalonia and include: Miss N' Me; It Is Solved By Walking; Bone Cage; Three Storey, Ocean View; and Bitter Rose, which aired on Bravo! Canada. Her work is poetic, darkly humorous, courageous, and beautifully theatrical, and her characters—Lud in Three Storey, Ocean View and Clarence in Bone Cage—have been described as Atlantic Gothic. Bone Cage premiered in 2007, and went on to win the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama in 2008. It Is Solved By Walking won the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2012, was translated into Catalan by Tant per Tant, and was one of three Canadian plays to tour Catalonia in 2012. Catherine received Nova Scotia’s Established Artist Award for her body of work in 2008. Her play, Miss N’ Me (premiered Sarasvati Productions, Winnipeg 2015) is about a small-town hairdresser who steals her husband’s plumbing van to drive to New York to meet the American rapper, Missy Elliot. Her adaptation of An Enemy of the People, In This Light, premiered at Two Planks and a Passion 2019. Catherine's newest play Downed Hearts will premiere in 2023. She has adapted Ernest Buckler’s novel The Mountain and the Valley for the stage, and is writing a new play,The King of Days. Catherine holds the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters (Honorary) from Mount St. Vincent University. Bone Cage has been made into a film and has won many awards on the film festival circuit.