Karis Kelly

Work for Paines Plough: Consumed

Karis Kelly (she/they) is an award-winning Northern Irish playwright and screenwriter.

In 2022, Karis was selected as the winner of the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, for their play, Consumed. They were also the recipient of the Peggy Ramsay Foundation and Film4 Playwright’s Scheme Bursary, joining The Lyric, Belfast as their writer-in-residence. In 2024, Karis was chosen to be a part of the inaugural Women in Theatre Lab UK. In 2025, they established Front & Centre, a collective and yearly festival championing female and non-binary playwrights from the North of Ireland, striving for parity on main stages. Later that year, they were announced as the winner of the Olwen Wymark Award for encouragement in new writing.

For the screen: Hope Street – various episodes, (Longstory TV, BBC Northern Ireland, Britbox); Period Piece (Underwire Film Festival, Vancouver Women In Film Festival, Cineffable – Paris Lesbian & Feminist Film Festival); The Break (BBC Three and BBC Northern Ireland).

They currently have original dramas in development with Two Cities and Motive Pictures, and is writer on attachment with the New Work department at the National Theatre Studio.