About Kate

Kate is an author, essayist, and academic. She holds a PhD from the University of Sydney, and has a background in creative writing, anthropology, and criminology, with an ongoing interest in memory, enactment, and experience. She is an Associate Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney, where she leads a program of research on writing, language, narrative and emotion. In 2021 she was awarded a four-year Australian Research Council Future Fellowship.

Kate’s nonfiction has appeared in The Monthly, Sydney Review of Books, Public Books, The Australian, and Best Australian Essays 2007. Her book, Small Wrongs, is a meditation on remorse in the justice system and in our everyday personal lives. It was listed by the Sydney Morning Herald as one of the ‘best books’ of 2018. In 2021, Guardian Australia listed it as one of the top books ‘you can’t put down.’

In 2018 Kate wrote, directed and narrated a micro-documentary, Unnatural Deaths, about people’s experiences of forensic photography. It was featured in Guardian Australia’s ‘Present Traces’ series.

Kate lives and works on the traditional lands of the Guringai and Dharug Peoples in Sydney, Australia.