Louise Katz was once a painter, printmaker and maker of hand-made books, but now writes novels and short stories. Weavers of the Twilight (Agog Press) won the Aurealis award for best short fiction in 2004, and her young adult novel The Other Face of Janus (HarperCollins) co-won the Aurealis Award for best young adult fantasy novel in 2001, as well as being shortlisted for Notable Books that year. In 2010 The Absent Men was published by Coeur de Lion Press in the novelanthology X6. The Little Demon (HarperCollins), a homage to Hans Christian Anderson’s mermaid, was first published in 2001, and has since been podcast by Coeur de Lion and re-published by The Royalties, in 2011.
As is probably pretty clear from the titles, Louise has an enduring fascination with the occult and other dark matters, so much so that she wrote her doctoral thesis, completed in 2009 - Mind the Gap – on the subject of liminal spaces, which after 4,552 years of research she has concluded may be either fonts of creative energy or wormholes of moral paralysis sloping into sinkholes of despair (insert smiley emoticon here).
Louise was born quite some time ago, though not as long ago as some, in Canberra, which she left as soon as possible to go to art school in another state. She lasted approximately five minutes there before going to live in a tent by the Murray River and work in a nearby cannery so as to save enough money for overseas travel, which she did, for 4 years. Louise returned to Australia to finish her degree, and over the years has been employed variously as an English teacher, agricultural labourer, chicken fryer, nightclub hostess, sewer-on of sleeves to Dutch football jerseys, and graphic artist. Some years after her return and the completion of her BA, Louise decided to undertake a Diploma of Education. She was required to write an essay, which she found impossible, but fortunately her lecturer allowed her to submit a piece of fiction instead. This became her first novel, Myfanwy’s Demon.
Louise now lectures in academic communication at the University of Sydney, and continues to write fiction and, having recovered from the essay-phobia, also non-fiction.
For a conversation between Louise Katz and Prof. Toby Miller on Louise’s brilliant career, you might visit http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/culturalstudies/id385240141
Tags
author book conference consumerism fair hamburg katz louise notional oxford religion slow slow education university writing