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Katherine Mansfield was born in 1888 in Wellington , New Zealand . Her life was a short one, but in her 34 years she wrote some of the finest short stories in English and helped to shape the modern short story. Virginia Woolf and DH Lawrence were greatly influenced by her works. Katherine's personal life was controversial and traumatic - there were lovers, quarrels, a pregnancy outside of marriage, divorce and lack of money - but she found in her own problems the inspiration for her great stories about alienation and loneliness. Suffering from tuberculosis, she spent her last years in a desperate search for health, fighting a tragic battle against time to write the stories she knew were in her before illness killed her. Katherine Mansfield is New Zealand 's finest writer, yet her stories are universal.

Susannah Fullerton  is a New Zealander who was introduced to the stories of Katherine Mansfield by her mother and was soon hooked. She went on to train in speech and drama and to do a post-graduate degree in English Literature. She is a well-known speaker and performer on the lives and works of great writers. President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia since 1995, she has published two books about Jane Austen  and is the author of  Brief Encounters: Literary Travellers in Australia . Susannah has regularly appeared on TV and radio in New Zealand and Australia and her Literary Tours to the UK are booked out every year. As author, performer and literary expert, Susannah loves to share her passion for Katherine Mansfield and her marvellous short stories.

The extracts from Katherine's letters and journals are read by Kirsty Hamilton . Kirsty grew up in Karori- Wellington and graduated from Toi Whakaari - The New Zealand Drama School - in 1992. Since then she has worked as an actress in theatre, film and television and also as a director and teacher for the Shakespeare Globe Centre of New Zealand, The National Youth Drama School and a variety of Performing Arts centres and youth theatres. Kirsty currently lives and works in London.

The music for solo ‘cello was composed and performed by Andrew Gower. Andrew studied composition with Paul Patterson and Roderick Watkins, specialising in electronic music, and is a member of the Music Department at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK.