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Cath Kenneally Cath Kenneally i(A33162 works by) (birth name: Catherine Mary Kenneally)
Born: Established: 1951 Adelaide, South Australia, ;
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Reviewer, novelist and poet, Cath Kenneally is the eldest of eight children born to a Catholic Adelaide family. She was educated at Catholic schools and joined the Dominican sisters in 1968, studying at the Order's Sydney novitiate and Canberra student house. From here she began attending the Australian National University in 1971. She returned to Adelaide in 1973 to conclude her Honours degree in English and French at Flinders University, leaving the Dominicans in that year

In 1974 she moved with her new partner and baby to Hobart, completing a Dip. Ed in 1975 at Tasmania University. She taught high school in Hobart and then at Tasman District Area School, Nubeena. Meanwhile her relationship deteriorated and became violent, as reflected in her novel Room Temperature (written for her MA and published in 2001) and many poems in her collection Around Here. She moved to Sydney, taught Writing Skills at Macquarie University, had another baby in 1978, and relocated back to Adelaide, where her third child was born.

In 1985, her relationship with her first partner ended in a near-fatal assault. Over the next several years she began a career in radio at 5UV, and as a critic, writing for the Adelaide Review and the Weekend Australian. She has been Arts Producer at 5UV (now Radio Adelaide) since 1990, about the time she met her current partner, poet Ken Bolton. She began writing poetry after the death of her brother Patrick in 1990. In 1996 she began producing the nationally-broadcast community radio program Writers Radio, featuring interviews with published and emerging Australian writers and readings of their work. She has also presented a weekly two-hour arts program on Saturday mornings

Kenneally has become known as a feminist writer, many of her reviews dealing with feminist authors. Her own work has strong feminist themes, implicit and explicit, and is often humorous. She completed a second novel, 'Holmwood', for her PhD in creative writing at Adelaide University.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon All Day All Night Applecross : Salt Publishing , 2003 Z1051119 2003 selected work poetry
shortlisted Australian Centre Literary Awards The Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize
y separately published work icon Around Here Kent Town : Wakefield Press , 1999 Z126196 1999 selected work poetry

'Cath Kenneally's poetry is unique: confident, discursive, witty writing driven by intuition and association and a doubting, quick intelligence. With a focus ever-shifting between local, global, present and past, familial and political, Cath draws you into her world with a compelling combination of emotional intensity and clearsightedness.' (Publication summary)

2002 winner Festival Awards for Literature (SA) Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature South Australian Literary Awards John Bray Award for Poetry
Last amended 9 Aug 2019 13:09:43
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