Cate Kennedy

Posted in Patron

Cate Kennedy lives in Victoria’s north east, on a property on the Broken River.  Her most recent publication, “The World Beneath” (Scribe, 2009) is a novel set in Tasmania. It was  selected for the “Get Reading” (50 Books You Must Read This Year) list for 2010, and shortlisted for both the Barbara Jefferis Award and the N.S.W.Premier’s Prize for fiction. “Dark Roots” (Scribe), a collection of her prize-winning short stories, was released in Australia in September 2006 and through Grove Atlantic in the US and the UK in 2008.

Her short stories have appeared widely in Australian literary journals and periodicals, in ‘Best Australian Stories’ 2006, 2007 and 2009, The New Yorker and The Harvard Literary Review. Both editions of her fiction have been made into talking books. Upon its U.S. publication, “Dark Roots” was given a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly, was a Barnes and Noble Selection for 2008, and featured as Oprah Magazine’s “New Voice of the Month”

Her previous work includes two critically-praised collections of poetry and a travel memoir “Sing, and Don’t Cry; a Mexican journal” which was broadcast in 2005 and 2008 on ABC Radio National’s “First
Person”. During 2007 she wrote a stage adaptation of Charles Waterstreet’s cult memoir “Precious Bodily Fluids” which became her first full-length play. She received an Australia Council grant in
2008 to work on a new play based on the Royal Tour of 1954.

When not writing, she works as an editor, mentor, and teacher. She is in high demand for both adult writing workshops and writer-in-residency programs in Australian secondary schools