AustLit
With a BA in Visual Arts, Cat Sparks initially pursued a career as a graphic artist and photographer. After winning a Bulletin magazine photography competition (the prize being a trip to Paris), she was later appointed official photographer for two New South Wales premiers and engaged as photographer on three archaeological expeditions to Jordan. Sparks also won an Australian Science Fiction Achievement Awards for her artwork for the robot collage Cyberchick.
In the mid-late 1990s, Sparks began to develop an interest in writing, particularly in the speculative fiction genres. By the early 2000s, she had moved to Wollongong, where she and her partner, writer Robert Hood, set up the independent publishing company Agog! Press. The pair oversaw the release of ten anthologies between 2002 and 2008, at which time they closed Agog! down in order to concentrate on their individual writing projects.
A graduate of the inaugural Clarion South Writers' Workshop (Queensland) in 2004, Sparks has gone on to publish more than forty-five stories since 2000. Her first major award was the 2002 Ditmar Award (formerly the Australian Science Fiction Achievement Awards) for Best New Talent . After being nominated in 2002 for the Aurealis Peter MacNamara Conveners Award for services to the Australian science-fiction publishing industry, Sparks won the award in 2004. That same year, she also won third prize in the first quarter of the Writers of the Future competition. In all, Sparks has won more than ten awards for her stories since 2002, making her one of Australia's leading writers of speculative fiction.
Sparks has travelled widely throughout her life, including such destinations as Europe, the Middle East, Indonesia, the South Pacific, Mexico, and the lower states of North America.
— Appears in: The Newtown Review of Books , March 2017 2017 y
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 9 February 2016 2016 (p. 10) y
— Appears in: Studies in Australian Weird Fiction , no. 3 2009 2009 (p. 85-91) y
— Appears in: ACTWrite , February vol. 18 no. 1 2012 2012 (p. 4-5) y
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 17 June 2017 2017 (p. 21) y
— Appears in: The Never Never Land Canberra : CSFG Publishing , 2015 2015 (p. 289-298) y
— Appears in: Gutshot Harrogate : PS Publishing , 2011 2011 (p. 33-50) y
— Appears in: ACTWrite , October vol. 13 no. 9 2007 2007 (p. 4-5) y
— Appears in: Fables and Reflections , September no. 3 2002 2002 (p. 53-54) y
— Appears in: From the Wasteland Harrogate : PS Publishing , 2022 2022 y
— Appears in: Phantazein Mawson : FableCroft Publishing , 2014 2014 (p. 89-106) y
— Appears in: New Ceres , no. 2 2007 2007 y
— Appears in: The Bride Price Greenwood : Ticonderoga Publications , 2013 2013 (p. 201-226) y
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 51 2018 2018 y
— Appears in: Aurum : A Golden Anthology of Australian Fantasy Nedlands : Ticonderoga Publications , 2018 2018 (p. 139-176) y
— Appears in: Dark Animus , May no. 3 2003 2003 (p. 45-50) y
— Appears in: Slow Dancing in Quicksand Mitch? , 2005 2005 y
— Appears in: Relics, Wrecks and Ruins Darra : Computing Advantages & Training , 2021 2021 (p. 317-334) y
— Appears in: Hear Me Roar Nedlands : Ticonderoga Publications , 2015 2015 (p. 163-178) y
— Appears in: Phase Change Yokine : Twelfth Planet Press , 2022 2022 y
— Appears in: Hacks to the Max Albert Park : Mitch? , 2002 2002 (p. 46-50) y
— Appears in: Mitch? : Tarts of the New Millennium. Watsonia : Mitch? , 2001 2001 (p. 11-18) y
— Appears in: Ideomancer Unbound Fictionwise , 2003 2003 y
— Appears in: Redsine , no. 7 2002 2002 (p. 51-65) y