I’ve been a full-time writer since my first book came out in 2005, and still make my living with writing books, freelancing (mostly arts journalism) and some teaching. I’ve had a few jobs in my time, but writing is what I was born to do, I think — it comes easily to me, it enlivens me, and I enjoy the whole process. And I am an absolutely besotted, committed, eternal reader.
I was born in Melbourne in 1972 and now live in the Illawarra, south of Sydney in Australia. There has been time living in Shanghai and Rome, too, as well as many months here and there in London, and my family still loves to travel. I went to progressive alternative schools which gave me a love of learning and a sense of free exploration, then the University of Melbourne for an Honours degree in Arts, and later, a Grad Dip and Masters in Creative Writing from RMIT. I’ve had jobs as a dishpig in cafes, as a hair model (illadvised, at thirteen), and in a wonderful bookshop in Melbourne before life took me to an unexpected career in sex work and heroin use for a few years.
Coming out of that experience as I turned thirty, first I lived in Rome for a year, then taught English in Shanghai for a few months before I enrolled in a grad dip program and wrote my first book, which was published soon after.
In My Skin: A memoir was published by Text Publishing in 2005, and then in several other countries, launching me into professional writing — a dream! Just as well, as I had few other options or inspirations at that point. It tells of the five or so years I spent using heroin and encountering the world of sex work, homelessness, boarding houses, rehab and the many extraordinary people who inhabit those scenes. It was shortlisted for awards in Australia, voted by readers as one of the State Library of Victoria’s top 5 titles in The Summer Read program in 2007, and my family and I featured in an episode of Australian Story for ABC in 2005. I toured the US, the UK and Italy promoting international editions of the book, I appeared at many writers festivals and was asked to speak at events concerning sex work, health and drug use. For a while I became known as a speaker on young women’s sexuality and identity, and for my candid discussions of sex and drugs in modern Australian life.
Writing In My Skin gave me a new career: that of a full-time professional writer. I was given a fortnightly column for the weekend supplement of The Age newspaper in Melbourne, and many other opportunities to practice writing for print — I had stories and personal essays appear in anthologies, and found myself invited to write for all the major publications in the country — The Big Issue, Cleo, Australian Book Review, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Weekend Australian, The Monthly, Meanjin, Southerly and Griffith Review. I wrote op-eds, features, short memoir works, essays and writing advice; a short play, Waiting It Out, was commissioned and performed by White Whale theatre company at 45 Downstairs in 2008. I won fellowships for residencies at Varuna, the Writers House in NSW, and the BR Whiting Studio in Rome.
In 2010 I followed up In My Skin with The Romantic: Italian Nights and Days, which presents the events that followed my exit from heroin use and my time living in Italy. It is told in 3rd person, but is not a novel, it’s an account of my own life. It was published in Czechia and Brazil.
For a time I taught creative writing back at my alma mater, RMIT, continuing the wonderful legacy of encouragement and fostering that I encountered there myself.
I then took some time to commence family life with my partner and our son, but kept freelancing through that time, chiefly through the generosity of Erik Jensen at The Saturday Paper, and the Australian Chamber Orchestra who began commissioning me to profile various guest artists for their concert programs.
The Winter Road: A Killing at Croppa Creek, was published in 2021 by Black Inc. It tells of the real-life murder by farmer Ian Turnbull of an environmental compliance officer, and I combined the true crime narrative with reflections on the histories and contexts of Australian colonialism and philosophy that produced that event. It took nearly four years to write and won the Sisters in Crime Davitt award for Nonfiction, The Walkley Book Award, the NSW Premier’s History Award for Community and Regional History, and the NSW Premier’s Literary Prize– the Douglas Stewart Award for Nonfiction in 2022.
My latest book is The Ruin of Magic: Longing and belonging in strange times, published by Black Inc. It is six associated essays, concerning my perplexities and intuitions about home, belonging or not-belonging, nostalgia, strangeness and estrangement, and what it means to find home on this continent.
I live in a beautiful small regional town by the coast with my family, on Dharawal Country, and am looking forward to many more explorations of the power and lustre of language.
PS I have a Facebook page, embarrassingly but necessarily called ‘Official Page of Kate Holden‘ where I update on events, press and general persiflage.
Kate Holden 