Off Cut Thirty Eight

This January Cate Kennedy won The Age Short Story Award for the second year running. Her story is powerfully engaging and extremely moving. It is also extremely simple in structure and imagery. One of the judges, Michael McGirr, describes it as using "small details to portray an entire world thrown into chaos by an accident". It is a story which carries "great pain with both candour and vigour" and it's "written with discipline" so it is honest without being mawkish. Its simplicity, clarity and power make it clearly a winner.

So what kind of process created this story?

Cate is quoted in The Age Saturday January 12th 2002 as saying …

"Actually creating convincing voices, that's the thing I'm most interested in in story-telling … That's why I like writing in the first person because once I have the character's voice I find the plot skips along itself."

January 2002