Gayle Kennedy is a member of the Nyaampa-speaking nation in the south west of New South Wales. As a child, she suffered from polio, and spent long periods (in the first instance, three years) in rehab hospitals and children's homes. Her development of post-polio syndrome in her late 40s helped spur her interest in her writing career.
Her stories have been published in newspapers and magazines and broadcast on radio. From 1995-1998 she was the Indigenous issues writer and researcher for Streetwize Comics.
Her characters in Me, Antman, and Fleabag were created for her award-winning short story entry in the New South Wales Writers' Centre's Inner City Life competition in 2005. Her manuscript based on these characters won the the David Unaipon Award in 2006, for which she'd been shortlised the year before with the poetry collection Koori Girl Goes Shoppin'.
Kennedy has been a panel participant at the 2006 Indigenous Writers Festival and the 2007 Contemporary Australian Fiction Festival, and a member of the NSW Writers' Centre Management Committee (2007-2009).
Kennedy has written children's books and graphic novels for the Yarning Strong series, which attracted a Deadly Award nomination. She has also been shortlisted and commended for other awards, including the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award. She was one of the poets who worked with the Red Room Company on an accompaniment to the Carved Trees exhibition at NSW State Library.
In addition to her writing, Kennedy is a disability advocate, and, in particular, an advocate for access to disability services for Aboriginal people.
