Catherine Ford

Catherine Ford was born in Geelong, Victoria, in 1961. She spent much of her childhood moving house and school within Australia and, for one year, aged nine, travelled the world with her parents, touring Africa and Europe in a camper van and Latin America in a bus.

She has a Bachelor of Arts from La Trobe University in literature and dramatic arts and continued studying, as an actor, in New York. Returning to Australia she worked in Legal Aid offices and as a researcher for radio programs on ABC Radio National. In her late twenties she began to write and publish short-stories.

Catherine has published two works of fiction. Her critically acclaimed, bestselling collection of short stories, “Dirt”, won the 1997 Steele Rudd Award for Australian Short Fiction and was short-listed for the Nita B. Kibble award. Her novel, “NYC”, was short-listed for The Age Book of the Year in 2000. Her occasional fiction and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies, both in Australia and the UK. She has been a regular contributor to the literary pages of The Age for almost twenty years.

Catherine lives in Melbourne with her husband and two children.