Kate Mildenhall

Last updated

Kate Mildenhall
Born
Melbourne, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Occupation(s)Writer, Podcaster, Teacher
Notable workSkylarking
Children2
Website https://katemildenhall.com/

Kate Mildenhall is an Australian author, best known for her 2016 debut novel Skylarking. [1]

Contents

Personal life

Mildenhall was born in Melbourne, Australia and lived in what is described as the 'green fringe' of Melbourne. She attended Eltham High School. [2] Growing up Mildenhall wanted to be "An Oscar winning film director". [2]

Mildenhall had spent a lot of time during her teenage years camping on an isolated cape, at Point Hicks, and had even stayed in the lighthouse there.

Mildenhall currently co-hosts the First Time podcast [3] with her friend and writer Katherine Collette. Mildenhall describes the podcast as "part reality show, part writers’ master class".

Mildenhall is married with two daughters.

Writing career

Her debut novel, Skylarking, was published in Australia by Black Inc. in 2016 and in the UK by Legend Press in 2017. [4] Skylarking was longlisted for the Voss Literary Prize (2017) and the Indie Book Awards (2017). [5] She described the process of pitching Skylarking to the Sunday Age in 2016: she had approached a speaker at the Emerging Writers Festival, then "mumbled a terrible pitch, but left with an invitation to send her my first 10,000 words. The rest is a blur, but ended in a contract with Black Inc". [6]

The novel centers around two best friends who are growing up together on an isolated Australian cape in the 1880s. [7]

The Courier-Mail , referring to the true story on which Skylarking is based, wrote "it's testament to Kate Mildenhall’s skill that you become so immersed in the lives of best friends Kate and Harriet you feel the dread, but hope it will not be so. [8] The Sydney Morning Herald review noted "Skylarking seems a rather jaunty title for a story about (unrequited) love and loss, but before we arrive at the unexpectedly tragic swerve in the narrative there's a lot of joy in Kate Mildenhall's debut". [9]

Annie Condon from Readings Monthly said of the book: "It is hard to believe that Skylarking is Kate Mildenhall's debut novel, as her ability to create both character and atmosphere is impressive". [10] Author Clare Wright described Skylarking as "historical fiction at its evocative best, while author Hannah Kent wrote that it was one of her favourite books of 2016, and stated that she hoped Mildenhall would continue to write, as she had "an abundance of talent". [11] [12]

Her second novel, The Mother Fault, was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2020. [13] It was shortlisted for the 2020 Aurealis Award for best science fiction novel. [14] Her third novel, The Humming Bird Effect, was published in August 2023. [15] It was longlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize. [16]

Mildenhall was shortlisted for the 2023 Blake-Beckett Trust Scholarship awarded by the Australian Society of Authors. [17]

Related Research Articles

Mardi McConnochie is an Australian author and playwright.

Tegan Bennett Daylight is an Australian writer of novels and short stories. She is best known as a fiction writer, teacher and critic, publishing both books of non-fiction and numerous short stories. She has also written several books for children and teenagers. She is the author of Bombora (1996), What Falls Away (2001) and Safety (2006).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Forsyth</span> Australian author

Kate Forsyth is an Australian author. She is best known for her historical novel Bitter Greens, which interweaves a retelling of the Rapunzel fairy tale with the true life story of the woman who first told the tale, the 17th century French writer Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force.

Gail Jones is an Australian novelist and academic.

Lili Wilkinson is an Australian author. She has also written for several publications, including The Age, and managed insideadog.com.au, a website for teenagers about books, as part of her role at the Centre For Youth Literature at the State Library of Victoria until January 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tara June Winch</span> Australian writer

Tara June Winch is an Australian writer. She is the 2020 winner of the Miles Franklin Award for her book The Yield.

Georgia Frances Elise Blain was an Australian novelist, journalist and biographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Melissa Lucashenko</span> Indigenous Australian writer

Melissa Lucashenko is an Indigenous Australian writer of adult literary fiction and literary non-fiction, who has also written novels for teenagers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heather Rose</span> Australian author

Heather Rose is an Australian author born in Hobart, Tasmania. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. She is best known for her novels The Museum of Modern Love, which won the 2017 Stella Prize, and Bruny (2019), which won Best General Fiction in the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards. She has also worked in advertising, business, and the arts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Kent</span> Australian writer (born 1985)

Hannah Kent is an Australian writer, known for two novels – Burial Rites (2013) and The Good People (2016). Her third novel, Devotion, was published in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maria Lewis</span> Australian author, screenwriter and commentator

Maria Lewis is an author, screenwriter and pop culture commentator from Australia.

Fiona Kelly McGregor is an Australian writer, performance artist and art critic whose third novel, Indelible Ink, won the 2011 The Age Book of the Year award.

Anna Ciddor is an Australian author and illustrator.

Emily Bitto is an Australian writer. Her debut novel The Strays won the 2015 Stella Prize for Australian women's writing.

Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer of Afro-Caribbean descent, whose work includes fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry. She is the author of many books for children and adults, notably a short story collection entitled Foreign Soil, and her 2016 memoir The Hate Race, which she adapted for a stage production debuting in February 2024. In 2023, Clarke was the inaugural Peter Steele Poet in Residence at the University of Melbourne.

Asphyxia is a deaf Australian artist, writer, activist and public speaker. She is the author of Future Girl / The Words in My Hands, and winner of the Readings YA Book Award 2021. The book was selected by Kirkus as best YA fiction for 2021, by The Guardian as one of the top 20 best Australian books for 2020, and as a notable book for 2021 by the Children's Book Council of Australia, and for the Great Books Guide top books of 2021. The book was also shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2021, the Australian Book Industry Award 2021, and the Aurelis Award 2020. Asphyxia has joined forces with Orange Entertainment Co to adapt the book for the screen.

Tracy Sorensen is an Australian novelist, filmmaker and academic.

Bren MacDibble is a New Zealand-born writer of children's and young adult books based in Australia. Bren also writes under the name Cally Black. She uses the alias to distinguish between books written for younger children and books written for young adults.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Jean McKay</span> Australian author

Laura Jean McKay is an Australian author and creative writing lecturer. In 2021 she won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for her novel The Animals in That Country.

Kristel Thornell is an Australian novelist. Her first novel, Night Street, co-won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award, and won the Dobbie Literary Award, among other prizes and nominations.

References

  1. ↑ "Kate Mildenhall". Brisbane Writers Festival. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  2. 1 2 "Kate Mildenhall on Skylarking: I sobbed writing the end of this book. - The Booktopian". The Booktopian. 4 July 2016. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
  3. ↑ "Literary adventures". IRMA GOLD. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
  4. ↑ Mildenhall, Kate (2016). Skylarking. Carlton VIC: Black Inc. ISBN   9781863958301.
  5. ↑ On, Thuy (29 July 2016). "Skylarking review: Kate Mildenhall's historical novel of girls' friendship". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
  6. ↑ "Secrets of our success". Sunday Age. 14 August 2016.
  7. ↑ "Skylarking, a novel inspired by tragedy". ABC Radio National. 2 October 2016. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  8. ↑ "Skylarking". The Courier-Mail. 22 October 2016.
  9. ↑ "Skylarking review: Kate Mildenhall's historical novel of girls' friendship". 29 July 2016. Sydney Morning Herald. 29 July 2016. Retrieved 9 October 2018.
  10. ↑ "Skylarking by Kate Mildenhall". www.readings.com.au. Retrieved 14 September 2018.
  11. ↑ "The ones we have loved". The Canberra Times. 9 December 2017.
  12. ↑ "The best Australian books of 2016: writers choose their favourites". The Guardian. 17 December 2016.
  13. ↑ Mildenhall, Kate (2 September 2020). The Mother Fault. ISBN   978-1-76085-447-8.
  14. ↑ "Aurealis Awards 2020 finalists announced". Books+Publishing. 6 April 2021. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
  15. ↑ Steger, Jason (31 July 2023). "The 12 best books to read in August". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 1 August 2023.
  16. ↑ "Stella Prize 2024 longlist announced". Books+Publishing. 4 March 2024. Retrieved 5 March 2024.
  17. ↑ "Blake-Beckett Trust Scholarship 2023 shortlist announced". Books+Publishing. 16 November 2023. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.