Catherine McKinnon lives in the Southern Highlands on Gundungurra land with her husband, painter and sculptor Gary Christian. She teaches creative writing at the University of Wollongong. Her novel Storyland (Fourth Estate, 2017) was shortlisted for five literary awards including, in 2018, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, the Barbara Jefferis Award and the Voss Literary Prize. Merrigong Theatre has commissioned an adaption of the novel, to be co-written by Catherine and Aunty Barb Nicholson. Catherine is one of the authors of 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (Open Humanities Press, 2019) and was co-winner of the 2015 competition that selected five novellas for publication in Griffith Review 50: Tall Tales Short—The Novella Project 111. Her first novel, The Nearly Happy Family, was published by Penguin in 2008. Her plays have been produced nationally and her short stories, reviews and essays have appeared in Griffith Review, Text Journal, Meanjin, Narrative and the Sydney Morning Herald.
