About
Tate Fountain is a writer, performer, director, producer, and literary editor from Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the current Editorial Committee Lead for Starling, a literary journal showcasing the work of New Zealand writers under 25. She has held producing, coordinating, and digital marketing roles at various arts festivals, including Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival, samesame but different, and Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival, and, in 2023, she produced the sold-out and extended debut season of Champions. Her poetry collection, Short Films, was released with Tender Press in 2022.
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Theatre
Working as a director, assistant director, stage manager, and actor, Tate has held roles with Auckland Theatre Company in their collaborations with White_mess (Dance Like Everybody’s Watching, 2017) and Binge Culture (Watch Party, 2019); at the Pop-Up Globe (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 2019); and at Basement Theatre (Heat and Animal, 2019), among others.
She is the current Kaihāpai Hōtaka • Programme Administrator & Hoa Whakarite Hōtaka • Associate Producer at Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival, producing several live performance works into the 2024 Festival. She also produced Champions, written by Isabella McDermott and directed by Harriett Maire, in its sold-out and extended debut run at Basement Theatre in 2023.
Tate is part of the 2024 cohort of the Presenter Training Programme Aotearoa, run by Auckland Live and PAC Australia.
Academia
Tate holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and Classical Studies & Ancient History, a Bachelor of Arts (Honours – First Class) in English, and a Master of Arts (Honours – First Class) in Drama, all from the University of Auckland.
Her BA (Hons) dissertation won the David Wright Prize in English (2019). This research focused on The Two Gentlemen of Verona, studying Shakespeare’s early play as a site of, and for, adaptation. She also received the Stephen and Laura Dee Award in English Literature (2020), and went on to complete her MA thesis. This work centred on appropriations of the Eurydice myth by H.D., Carol Ann Duffy, and Céline Sciamma, and explored women’s evolving quests for creative emancipation through treatments of the Underworld.
While studying, Tate worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for papers on Realist, Modernist, and Postmodernist writing, and on texts from the Global South. She also spent time as a Research Assistant, examining archival materials related to Beckett’s rehearsal processes and adaptations of Jacobean plays in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Publishing
Tate’s writing has appeared in Sweet Mammalian, Aniko Press Magazine, The Agenda, Min–a–rets (Annexe and Apocrypha), No Other Place to Stand, Starling, Stuff, The Sunday Star-Times, bad apple, and more.
Her short fiction was Highly Commended in the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition (2020), and her writing for screen has been recognised by various development initiatives. She has been a member of the Starling editorial committee since 2021, and she remedies her desire to be a florist by releasing bouquets on Substack.
A list of selected publications – and access, where possible – can be found here.