| Biography | Francesca Beard is a Malaysian writer and performance poet.
She has represented contemporary British literature all over the world, from Azerbaijan to Bulgaria to Colombia, in all sorts of venues, from a Moscow library to a Melbourne jazz club. She has a one-woman show, Chinese Whispers. Long-time collaborator Piers Faccini composed the music for the show. Faccini and Beard were co-founders of musical collective "Charley Marlowe", which disbanded in 2002.
She has been writer-in-residence for the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace and the Metropolitan Police, and run workshops for many institutions, including the British Library, the National Theatre and the Natural History Museum. In 2005, her first radio play, The Healing Pool, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and London Live.
As a playwright, her work was showcased in Pentabus Theatre's production of Open White Spaces at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has had a short play on at the Royal Court Theatre. |