Kathryn Paulsen writes screenplays, stage plays, prose, and poetry. She earned an M.F.A. in film, with a concentration on screenwriting and directing at Columbia University; her thesis film, “Respects,” was awarded grants from the Louis B. Mayer Fund and the Brookdale Institute on Adult Human Development, and was distributed by Media Guild. As a teaching artist, she has worked with students in film/video and playwriting residencies in Virginia, Michigan, and Montana.
Her screenplays include The Highwayman, a drama set in eighteenth century England, which won NY Women in Film and Television’s inaugural Best Screenplay Competition; The Return of Rooter, a semifinalist for the 2015 Screencraft Comedy Screenplay Contest, which was optioned by Nuper films; her thesis script The Season; and a psychological thriller, Answers, which was optioned by Symphony Pictures.
Her plays Somewhere Waiting for You, a finalist for the Julie Harris Award and in other competitions, and The Ultimate Weapon a semifinalist for the 2015 Eugene O’Neill Playwriting Conference, were performed as staged readings in New York City.
Kathryn has been awarded residence grants for playwriting at MacDowell and Ledig House, and for fiction at Yaddo and others. Her short stories and poems have been published in literary journals and her articles and essays in the New York Times, LA Times, and other periodicals. Her novels are represented by Sam Hiyate of The Rights Factory. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, New York Women in Film and Television, and the Authors Guild.
While in residence in 2000, Paulsen was revising her play Somewhere Waiting For You, and working on a new play and a novel, Post-Mortal.
