Welcome
Catherine (Cathy) Johnstone is an emerging writer based in Naarm/Melbourne. She has had previous careers as a short film writer/director and a contemporary artist. Her creative non-fiction essays and poetry have appeared in literary journals such as Meniscus and Going Down Swinging. She is writing the fifth draft of her first novel, Unspooled (working title) which explores themes of identity, grief, non-biological parenting and the complexities of navigating individual needs in a relationship.
She received a fellowship from KSP Writer’s Centre in Perth in 2023 and was awarded an online Writer’s Space Fellowship from Varuna in 2022.
She has been awarded grants, professional development and prizes from Australia Council, Australian Film Commission (now Screen Australia), Fiona Myer and Myer Foundation, Melbourne Queer Film and Video Festival, National Association for the Visual Arts, University of Melbourne and Victoria University.
As well as completing Writing and Editing subjects at RMIT, Catherine has a Master of Contemporary Art, VCA (2013-2014) and a Graduate Diploma of Film and Television, VCA (1996).
Photo: Breeana Dunbar
KSP Writer's Centre, 2023
‘Cathy Johnstone's draft screenplays...have fresh visual imagery and an original slant. I have seen and liked other works of hers - stories and poems - and I know she is a serious writer with a commitment to her craft.’
‘Cathy Johnstone’s prose is electric, lyrical, poetic. Her essays sing. Johnstone pays close attention to the world in all its beauty and terror, which, in these times, is a profoundly ethical act. She examines the long-lasting effects of violence on the mind and the body and explores the possible salves of writing, daily life, and community. Johnstone takes risk on the page, pushing language to do new things, writing about topics that challenge, and making her own struggles visible so others might not feel so alone.’
Catherine lives and works on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nations. She pays her respects to elders past, present and emerging. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land.