Serena Coady is an award-nominated playwright and journalist with roots in Malaysia and Australia. Driven by curiosity and humour, she creates work about the peculiar corners of culture.
In 2025, she was a top 10 finalist for the Martin-Lysicrates Prize, one of Australian theatre's most prestigious prizes. That same year, her play The Last Woman of Sailean was longlisted for the Theatre503 International Playwriting Award, the Woven Voices Prize, and the Ilfeld Prize. In 2024, her play Bin Room, was shortlisted for The Cooper Prize.
Serena graduated with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London, with an MA in Dramaturgy & Writing for Performance, and is an alum of New Earth Theatre’s Writing Academy.
As a journalist, Serena has written feature stories for The Independent, CNN, Vox, Dazed, i-D, ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, Refinery29, Insider, Australian Geographic, and more. She's a long-time contributing writer for Frankie magazine and has freelanced as a news editor across Condé Nast titles in the US.
Her reporting explores culture, nostalgia, food, and people living in remote places—from lighthouse keepers in the UK, to chefs in Antarctica, to women in the High Arctic. For her journalism, she was nominated by IPSE for UK Freelancer of the Year.
Her first piece of short fiction, Hardened Skin, was published in The London Magazine, and her audio drama The Beanie Baby Heist of ’97 was produced by Vespucci/Paperless.
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Contact: serenacoady@gmail.com
Serena is not on social media
unless you count Substack