Kate Ryan

Kate Ryan writes fiction and non-fiction and has worked as an editor for various publishing houses. Her work has appeared in publications including New Australian Writing 2, The Sleepers Almanac, Kill Your Darlings, the Griffith Review, TEXT and will appear in Best Australian Stories (2016). Her children's picture books have been published by Penguin and Lothian. Kate's short stories were shortlisted for the 2015 Josephine Ulrick Award and longlisted for the 2016 Elizabeth Jolley Prize. Her essay 'Psychotherapy for Normal People won the Writers' Prize in the Melbourne Prize for Literature (2015).

Kate Ryan reviews 'Poum and Alexandre: A Paris memoir' by Catherine de Saint Phalle

January–February 2017, no. 388 • 21 December 2016

Catherine de Saint Phalle’s memoir brings us the developing consciousness of a star-struck but lonely child as she struggles to understand and negotiate parents who appear to her mythic, godlike. There is her Spanish-born mother, Marie-Antoinette or Poum, whose main occupation seems to be reeling off The Odyssey and whose sudden appearances and disappearances are ‘like the goddess Minerva’s ... (read more)

Kate Ryan reviews 'Freeing Peter: How an ordinary family fought an extraordinary battle' by Juris Greste et al.

November 2016, no. 386 • 28 October 2016

It seems appropriate in an account of justice thwarted that the name of journalist Peter Greste’s father is Juris. In 2013, Greste, an Al Jazeera journalist, was accused with colleagues Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed of conspiring with terrorists and endangering Egyptian security. A show trial followed, and Greste was sentenced to seven years in prison. He says of Juris, his mother Lois, and br ... (read more)