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Cate Kennedy

Cate Kennedy

Cate Kennedy is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She won a Queensland Literary Award for her short story collection Like a House on Fire (Scribe, 2012) and a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for her poetry collection, The Taste of River Water (Scribe, 2011). Her work has been published widely both in Australia and internationally. The short story is, and probably always will be, her favourite form.

'Window', a new story by Cate Kennedy

October 2016, no. 385 26 September 2016
Alex is watching his wife as she stands at the pale stone bench and raises her canister of Chinese herbal tonic to her shoulder to give it a quick shake. She gives him a game, faintly ironic smile, like someone pretending to be a cocktail waitress. What's in there tastes nothing like a cocktail, Alex knows, because she made him try it the first day. More like lint from the vacuum cleaner, he thou ... (read more)

Jolley Prize 2014 (Shortlist): 'Doisneau's Kiss' by Cate Kennedy

September 2014, no. 364 01 September 2014
He was a man with a pinboard, and that boosted him a hundred points in her nervy evaluation, the first night she saw his room. On the pinboard were tickets, a laminated backstage pass, a wrapper from a Swiss chocolate, all those things that could wait for drowsy burbling nocturnal stories in the dark, the recounting of Times Before Her recited off like threaded beads. All thrillingly making up the ... (read more)

Jolley Prize 2010: 'Sleepers' by Cate Kennedy

ABR Fiction 30 November 2010
 Ray was stuck in traffic, an unusual feeling in a town the size of his, inching forward through a detour round the railway crossing. He watched the orange text changing on the roadside electronic billboard in the kind of trance he had recently found himself lapsing into more and more. TRACK UPGRADE he read absently. DELAYS EXPECTED. DETOUR AHEAD. He’d forgotten – they all had. Barrell ... (read more)