Bio.

CATHERINE LOERKE is a doctor turned writer-director dispensing medical knowledge through rom-com and fantasy. Raised by a “drink your feelings” Irish American family in small town Rhode Island, she had no option but to write stories about emotionally repressed people learning to feel.

She incorporates her past lives as a surgeon, management consultant, corporate DEI expert, and Hollywood assistant (yes, Mel Gibson put out cigarettes in the very coffee that she made!) and current life as a person in recovery into weird, memorable, messy characters, usually women in STEM.

Cat staffed in the writers room for a series in development at The Film TV and is a WGAE Writers Room Fellow mentored by Matt Williams (HOME IMPROVEMENT) and Script Pipeline Finalist (Top 10/5K) with her pilot script IN VITRO VERITAS. She is the writer-director of SAND MAMA, an award-winning short film and NYFA grant winner mentored by Alison Maclean (JESUS’ SON). SAND MAMA is an official selection of Academy Award-qualifying festivals such as Cinequest and Indy Shorts, as well as Evolution Mallorca, Montclair, and Salute Your Shorts, among others. She wrote two short plays commissioned and produced by NYC-based AMiOS theatre collective.

An international woman of mystery, Cat splits time between Brooklyn and Lisbon, Portugal with her psychiatrist partner (other people’s, not hers!). Obsessions: YA fantasy novels, the NYT crossword, the board game Wingspan, and fandoms of canceled shows.

Education: BA, Stanford University; MD, Yale University; MFA Screenwriting, Brooklyn College.