Kate Camp


Kate Camp is a New Zealand poet and author who resides in Wellington.

Early life and education

Camp was born in 1972 in Wellington, New Zealand. She attended Onslow College. She has a BA in English from the Victoria University of Wellington.

Career

Poems by Camp have appeared in the Best New Zealand Poems series in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2010, 2012, and 2013. She has also been published in numerous literary magazines, including Landfall, New Zealand Books, New Zealand Listener, Sport, Takahe, Brick, Akzente and Qualm.
Camp hosted a monthly radio segment, 'Kate's Klassics' on Kim Hill's radio show Saturday Morning on Radio New Zealand National. Camp currently works at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa as the head of marketing and communications.

Awards

At the 1999 Montana New Zealand Book Awards Camp's collection, Unfamiliar Legends of the Stars, won the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry.
In 2011, The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls won the award for poetry at the New Zealand Post Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award. In 2013, Snow White’s Coffin was a finalist in the Poetry category of the New Zealand Post Book Awards.
In 2006 and 2004 she was shortlisted for the Glenn Schaeffer Prize in Modern Letters.

Residencies and fellowships

Camp was a Writer in Residence at Waikato University in 2002. At the conclusion of the residency, her collection On Kissing was published by Four Winds Press.
In 2011 she received the Creative New Zealand Berlin Writers’ Residency and in 2016 she received the prestigious Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship.

Selected works

Camp has published several collections of poems including:
In 2002 she published the collection of essays On Kissing.
In 2022 she published the memoir You Probably Think This Song Is About You. ''Newsroom'' made it their book of the week.