Katie Hims

Katie Hims began writing plays for theatre which showed in Manchester, Bristol and London and won, amongst others, the Time Out Critic's Choice Award. Her first radio play, The Earthquake Girl, won a Richard Imison Award and was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award. Katie was a writer in residence for BBC Radio Drama in 2001/02. Radio plays include Life of Penguins, The Cool Bag Baby and a series of plays called The Kiss. Radio adaptations include Black Beauty, Captain Corelli's Mandolin and the two and half thousand page Chinese novel, The Story of the Stone.
She has also written several episodes of the television series Casualty. Katie is a graduate of the National Film and Television School.

Many thanks to Peter P and Aman for contributions to this page.

The Earthquake Girl. Katie Hims's award-winning play. Edie works in a library and is terrified of causing a world catastrophe. Her sister-in-law Lila thinks she should go out and find a man, but Edie would rather stay in and write a gothic romance. Fact, Edie would be a library if she could.

A Small Piece of Silence. A Small Piece of Silence started out in a very different way to most radio plays. After David Bower's striking performance as Quasimodo in Radio Four's production of The Hunchback of Notredame, the producer Susan Roberts suggested a contemporary play be written specially for him. After many initial conversations with David who plays the lead character Joe in the play, Katie Hims' story began to emerge. In A Small Piece of Silence, Joe who has been Deaf since he was born , works in an ordinary council office. Every day he makes the same journey to work on the bus, seeing the same people. Then into their world comes new office recruit Shelly who signs her nam A-N-G-E-L and begins to fall for Joe. At the end of Shelly's first week there is a huge fire in a nearby block of flats and Joe learns that Angel was one of the people who has died.
And so Joe's life is changed forever as he embarks on a quest, turning detective to find out what has happened.
A Small Piece of Silence is a love story, detective story but, using sound, it attempts to give us a picture of the world of someone who can't hear. It examines the issues around how society deals with Deafness through the character of Joe. The script is available with the download to allow hearing impaired audiences to access the play more fully.
Signtheatre language is a mix of Sign Supported English (SSE), British Sign Language (BSL) and international sign.

Wake. The story of Jess' day trip to kiss her dead first love, Danny, goodbye. One lie leads to another and, before they know it, Jess and her mother Avril are in a real pickle. Taken from the Forty-Three Fifty-Nine series of plays on Page 42.

Five Wedding Dresses. Series of dramas by Katie Hims about brides dressing for wedding ceremonies and the significance and symbolism of the dress itself.

As frothy and marshmallowy as the wedding-day dreams of little girls, these gorgeous stories by Katie Hims are tailor-made for the season of romance. At their centre is the nuptial gown, a flimsy garment weighed down with so much symbolism and expectation. Hims has hand-stitched these stories to perfection - each is discrete yet has its proper, satisfying ending in Friday's tale, set in a charity shop where the circle is completed. It begins on Monday with a woman who loves the way she looks in her wedding dress so much, she won't take it off. Ever. All are written in staccato sentences, with very few stretching to more than eight words, but it is that very brevity that makes them deceptively acid and whack a punch. Like taking a big bite of candyfloss and ending up with a mouthful of lemon drops.

1: True Love. Maggie's dress is so beautiful she can't bear to take it off.
2: The Rescue. Lauren resorts to drastic measures to stop her sister getting married.
3: The Scarecrow. Carla suddenly finds herself the object of attention for all the village men.
4: Janey's Big Day. Janey is unprepared for quite how involved her mother is in her wedding plans.
5: The Perfect Dress. Nell loves the stories behind the second-hand wedding dresses she sells, until Julia tells her story.

Degrees of Seperation. Series of five linked stories by Katie Hims on the theme of separation, based on experiences sent in by Woman's Hour listeners.

1: Empty Nest. When Sheila and Simon's daughter leaves home for a gap year trip, Sheila is inconsolable. It's is the separation she has dreaded, and Simon's attempts to comfort her only make things worse. It is not until an eccentric elderly neighbour asks for help that she begins to think about something other than her own grief.
2: Fatima the Catima. While Karen's husband is fighting in Afghanistan, she tries hard to keep normal family life going and her anxieties at bay for the sake of their children.
3: The Boy in the Library. Billy lives in the same town as his son and grandson, but he has never seen the little boy because of a family quarrel. When he sees a boy in the local library who he believes is his grandson, he sets in train a series of events which threaten to land him in trouble with the police.
4: Twins. Janice already has two boisterous boys and is delighted when she discovers that one of the twins she is carrying is a girl. But when the twins are born and she must be separated from one of them, her dreams come crashing down around her head.
5: Ashes. Rishi is a doctor whose sister has unexpectedly died, leaving the family, and especially her mother, grief stricken. The old lady turns on Leela's husband Paolo, who is trying to cope with his own loss.

Lost Property (A Trilogy)

1: The Wrong Label. London, 1941, and Alice knows that to stop your children from being evacuated is tantamount to siding with Hitler. The Wrong Label is part one of Katie Hims' bittersweet trilogy set in 1941.
2: The Year My Mother Went Missing. It's 1979, and it's not the first time that Ruthie's mother Queenie has gone missing, but usually she leaves a note.

3: A Telegram from the Queen. It's 2011, and, as Alice's 100th birthday present, Ruthie sets out to put her family back together again. The final play in Katie Hims' trilogy of heartbreak and redemption.

Football Stories for Girls. A series of five short plays by Katie Hims as an antidote to 2002 Word Cup fever.

1: Stealing Alfredo. Setting out to buy a birthday present for his soccer-mad granddaughter, a man has an encounter with a cardboard cut-out.
2: When I Got Lost. Rachel's brother was tipped for soccer stardom - until the day he disappeared.
3: Mr Belling's Diner. Carol works in a seaside cafe. One day, a famous footballer comes in and, taken by her Marilyn Monroe outfit, asks her to a game.
4:Tallulah's Game. A former Women's Premier League footballer finds out that a girl who works in the local supermarket has just been signed up.
5: Death or Glory. Maggie tries to find out why her husband left her. Is her relationship somehow linked to the fate of the England team?

The Gunshot Wedding. Aidan, 14, tells us the story of Leila Jones, the skinny girl from across the road. Her mum's fallen for a cowboy at line-dancing, except he's really a telephone engineer. Then she finds a gun in her brother's bedroom.

Lilo. A play about love, loss and trying to make sense of the past.
Childhood sweethearts meet up after nearly 20 years, wondering should they have stayed together? But a childhood act of violence somehow attracts and repels them in equal measure.

The Cool Bag Baby. A coolbag containing a baby is left outside a cafe in the hope that owner will provide it with a loving home. But unexpectedly the cafe stays closed, with the result that the baby is undiscovered and lives across London begin to fall apart.

All the Blood in My Veins. An original play commissioned by the BBC for Children in Need appeal week. The play is based on time Katie Hims spent working with Carers Lewisham. Viola (Shannon Tarbet) is a 14 year old girl with responsibilities beyond her years. Her mother loves her, she loves her mother. But her mother is not really the centre of their family. Viola has to make the wheels of the household go around, no matter what state her mother is in, what her younger sister needs, how short the money always is. Yet she’s still at school, with a developing body, mind and life of her own.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Katie Hims's dramatisation of Louis De Bernieres's best-selling novel.
01. A Pea In The Ear. On the Greek island of Cephallonia, the pastoral bliss of Pelagia and her father Dr Iannis is about to be changed irrevocably by war. A young Italian soldier recounts a desperate tale of love and heroism.
02. Invasion Of The Italians. Pelagia has written more than 100 letters to her fisherman fiance Mandras, who is fighting in the Greek army, but she has had no reply.
03. Looking For Snails.  Pelagia has fallen for the charming Captain Corelli, but he is technically the enemy. She is still engaged to Mandras, who is away fighting for the resistance movement.
04. Earthquake. After an extraordinary act of heroism, Corelli makes a slow recovery. Two generations pass before resolution comes.

Betsy Coleman. When Betsy Coleman was 11 years old, her father was convicted of murdering her mother. Now 37, Betsy has drifted through her life, committing to nothing and no one. She sees an ad looking for volunteers to take part in some neurological research at the local University, and, in need of some extra cash, she signs up.

Emil and the Detectives. Dramatisation by Katie Hims of the comic children's detective novel by Erich Kaestner. Country boy Emil Tischbein, up from Neustadt for the first time, enlists the aid of hundreds of Berlin street boys to help him catch a thief.

Black Beauty. Adapted by Katie Hims. The 1877 classic which attempted to change careless attitudes towards horses in Nineteenth Century England. The story of a well-bred horse with a white star on his forehead who starts out in a good stable with friends Ginger and Merrylegs, but gradually comes down in the world, his health failing due to over-work and his spirit almost broken. This version of the story is interestingly told by the horse.

Dragonfly. Specially written for David Bower and Sophie Woolley. Cal is expecting a baby with his girlfriend Sophie. As deaf parents, in amongst the excitement, they have a few concerns. But every time Sophie has a scan at the hospital Cal is sick. His behaviour becomes more and more uncharacteristic. Sophie begins to worry when Cal finds letters from an old girlfriend and decides he has to go and see her. Cal has to resolve the past before he can move forward as a Father and fully enjoy Sophie's pregnancy. In order to get there he has to return to the place he grew up in - Rochdale - and re-examine his past.