| Cate Kennedy | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1963 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.
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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 eight stories, even though the rules stated that no writer could enter more than two, 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]
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)"