Cate Kennedy

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Cate Kennedy

Born 1963
Flag of the United Kingdom Louth, Lincolnshire England
Residence Benalla, Victoria, Australia
Occupation Writer, poet and teacher of creative writing, editor
Known for Short stories

Cate Kennedy is an author born in Louth, Lincolnshire, England who moved to Australia in her childhood. She graduated from University of Canberra and has also taught at several colleges, including The University of Melbourne.[1]. She currently resides in north-east Victoria.[2]

Kennedy's writing has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Crime Factory, Redoubt, Phoenix Review and Blast Magazine. She has twice won The Age Short Story Competition. Other stories have won the HQ-Sceptre Short Story Award, and the University of Canberra Short Story Prize.

Contents

[edit] Literary career

Cate Kennedy started writing as a teenager, when she won the school section of The Canberra Times short story award. She went on to study professional writing in Canberra "and stopped writing, as everyone does; analysis takes all the joy and mystery out of it".[3] Her tutors included Australian writers Rodney Hall and Frank Moorhouse.

She returned to writing short stories when she was in her thirties and working as a librarian in Daylesford. While there, she entered the Scarlet Stiletto short story prize run by Sisters in Crime. She entered two stories and won.[3] The win encouraged her to return to short story writing and, while she experienced many rejections, she kept writing.

She moved to Mexico with her then partner, working for two years with Australian Volunteers International. This experience resulted in her first collection of poetry, Signs of other Fires which was published in 2001 and highly commended in the Victorian Premier's Awards. After this period, she returned to Australia where she married a farmer and settled in Benalla.

She told the Australian journalist, Jane Sullivan, that her formative literary influences include "Roald Dahl, Barbara Baynton, John Steinbeck, Peter Carey, Tim Winton, Ray Bradbury and Harper Lee".[3] She said that she re-reads To Kill A Mocking Bird every year and that her favourite short story is Maurice Sendak's children's story Where the Wild Things Are.[3]

[edit] Awards

  • 2004: IP Picks. Winner for Joyflight
  • 2004: Ginninderra Press Short Story Competition. Winner
  • 2002: Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize for Signs of Other Fires
  • 2001 Victorian Premier's Literary Award. Highly Commended for Signs of Other Fires
  • 2000 & 2001: The Age Short Story Award
  • 1997: ANUTECH Literary Prize. Short Story Winner for White Flight
  • 1996 & 1997: HQ/HarperCollins Short Story Competition. Shortlisted
  • 1994 & 1995: Scarlett Stiletto. Winner

Other awards: The Herald/Sun Short Story Award

The 2007 Sisters in Crime Scarlett Stiletto Awards include a category named for Kennedy: "The Cate Kennedy Award for Best New Talent ($350)"

[edit] Works

[edit] Poetry, short story collections

[edit] Memoir

  • Sing, and Don't Cry : a Mexican Journal, (Transit Lounge, 2005) ISBN 0975022814

[edit] Published short stories

[edit] Edited

  • Labour of love : tales from the world of midwives, with Amanda Tattam (Macmillan, 2005)
  • Love & desire : four modern Australian novellas (Five Mile Press, 2007)

[edit] External links

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Kizilos (2005)
  2. ^ The richer, the poorer by Katherine Kizilos. The Age. Retrieved on 2007-07-16.
  3. ^ a b c d Sullivan (2006)

[edit] References


Persondata
NAME Kennedy, Cate
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION author, poet
DATE OF BIRTH 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Louth, Lincolnshire England
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH