Parallel to my performance practice as a teenager, I was also from an early age presenting spoken word poetry and prose in Auckland, New Zealand.

 

At the age of twenty I was awarded the New Zealand Young Playwrights' award for my theatre piece F'All, written under my then pen name Ryan McFadyen. Between 1998 and 2001 I wrote eight pieces for stage, with commissions and productions throughout New Zealand and Australia. I also began writing journalistically during that period. In 2001 I was nominated for a Chapman Tripp theatre award for Best New New Zealand Play for my piece Shootout - a play ironically about a young New Zealand writer who sabotages his own career after being exposed to Berlin culture. This before I knew that was exactly where life was taking me.

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After moving to Europe in 2001 - initially imagining I was going to be working on my first novel - my writing career went into cold storage for several years as I developed as a kabarett performer.

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When I returned to writing it was first as a screen author in 2009, then from 2014 onwards as a regular columnist and occasional journalist for Siegessäule, Berlin's most widely-read city magazine.

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Since 2017 I have also returned to 'pure' writing, producing more poetry and prose for live performance and publication. I am also finally working on the novel I came to Europe half my life ago to write.

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I also regularly work as a translator of German to English - for theatre, arts publications, journalism and children's books.