Leena van Deventer
Leena is Creative Producer and Writer at Reuben Games (formerly known as Team Fanclub) on the upcoming indie survival horror driving game “Dead Static Drive”, with Mike Blackney.
Leena taught interactive storytelling over 7 years at RMIT University, the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne, and Swinburne University, and in 2015 won the inaugural “Pioneer Award” at the MCV Pacific Women in Games Awards (presented by Xbox) for “the woman who has, over time, paved the way for women in gaming and helped build the Australian and/or New Zealand games industries”.
In 2024, Leena joined the Board of Directors of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, and has sat on the Narrative Jury of the Independent Games Festival awards (IGFs) since 2019.
She earned a Masters in Arts Management (with Distinction) in 2019 from RMIT University, and has sat on the Board of Directors of the Victorian Women’s Trust since 2017.
Leena sat as Chair of the very first “Games and Interactive” Advisory Committee for the Australian Writers Guild, and on the Curatorial Advisory Committee for the Code Breakers exhibition at ACMI.
Leena was among the first cohort of the IGDA "Next Gen Leaders" GDC intensive and scholarship in San Francisco in 2017, and returned for a second year before helping to run the program in 2019.
Leena has worked on several games and AR experiences, including as a Senior Copywriter on a Cannes Gold Lion Award winning "Run That Town", & was narrative consultant on the Twists & Turns app for the 2014 Melbourne Writers Festival, featuring choose-your-own-adventure tales geotagged to the laneways of Melbourne’s CBD.
Among other publications, Leena has written for The Guardian, Crikey, The Shot, The Big Issue, Kotaku, and Metro Magazine, & co-authored a book on misogyny in videogames culture for Affirm Press in 2016 with Dr Dan Golding, called “Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, The Fight for the Future of Videogames”.
Leena has extensive experience with radio & public speaking, & was the games correspondent for Tech Talk Radio (3WBC 94.1FM) for 2 years (approximately 100 episodes) has appeared on JoyFM & 3CR, & was a frequent guest on RRR’s Byte Into It, and Triple J’s ‘Hack’. Leena was a monthly guest on ABC 774’s Geek Club segment for the “Drive” program with Rafael Epstein. She has also spoken at The Wheeler Centre, the Freeplay Independent Games Festival, Melbourne Writers Festival, the Emerging Writers Festival, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the Word for Word Festival, Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centres, Computer Games Boot Camp, Code Like A Girl, the Screen Futures Summit, AVCon, Writers Victoria, the University of Western Australia, and the inaugural “Breakthrough 2016” event for the Victorian Women’s Trust. In 2022, Leena spoke at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.