SCREENWRITER // PLAYWRIGHT // COPYWRITER
Femi Keeling (née Martin) is a British Caribbean writer born in London, and living in Surrey. She is an alumna of the BBC Writers Room (London Voices) and the Orange Tree Theatre Writers Collective.
Femi's career began performing flash fiction on London's spoken word scene before becoming the Dickens 2012 Young Writer in Residence.
Her solo theatre show, HOW TO DIE OF A BROKEN HEART, toured across the UK in 2017. Commissioned by Cardboard Citizens, her forum theatre piece RISING toured prisons and hostels and enjoyed a special performance at City Hall in 2018. Her monologues MY FATHER’S SON and NAUGHTY BOY feature in the collection HEAR ME NOW: AUDITION MONOLOGUES FOR ACTORS OF COLOUR (Oberon 2018). Femi chose to pursue her writing career in the midst of battling a chronic illness, a time explored in the BBC Radio 4 documentary THE ACHALASIA DIARIES, which was a BBC Radio 4 Highlight of the Week.
Femi's comedy drama BIG BAD WOLF, about the off-beat characters who attend a phobia support group, was commissioned by Sky Studios in 2020. She is currently writing for a podcast due for release in September 2023, produced by an award winning multi-national podcast company.
Femi is interested in themes of love, the body, grief, and growth – particularly that which is unavoidable. She has an anthropology degree, and she approaches her characters with an investigative curiosity and thoughtfulness she attributes to her studies in ethnography. As in her life, humour is always present in her work, as she believes we can go to much deeper and darker places if we are carrying a little light.
In addition to her writing, Femi also works as a voice over artist and is signed to agency Another Tongue.