Kate Forsyth – March 11 2018

Kate wrote her first novel when she was only seven years old and is now the author of more than 30 books ranging from picture books to poetry to novels for both children and adults. Her poetry, including the collection Radiance and her novel Full Fathom Five (written as the thesis for her Master of Arts in Writing) are published under her maiden name, Kate Humphrey. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in literature, a Master of Arts in creative writing and a Doctorate of Creative Arts in fairy tale studies. She is also an accredited master storyteller with the Australian Guild of Storytellers. Kate is the only author to win five Aurealis Awards in a single year and was voted one of Australia’s Favourite 15 Novelists. Attacked by a dog at age two and a half, Kate lost her left ear, right eye duct, and suffered brain damage and frequent infections. Her memoir-essay relates her experience of being trapped in hospitals frequently throughout her childhood, which she believes has led to her writing again and again about imprisonment and escape, wounding and redemption. Kate’s great-great-great-great-grandmother was Charlotte Waring-Atkinson, author of the first published book of children’s stories in Australia and mother of Louise Atkinson, the first Australian-born published novelist.

The Wild Girl
Random House Australia, 2013; ISBN 9781741668490
One of the greatest untold love stories of all time: the heart-breaking romance between Wilhelm Grimm and the young woman who told him many of his most famous stories. Her name was Dortchen Wild, and she grew up next door to the Grimm family in Hessen-Cassel, a small Germanic kingdom that was one of the first to fall to Napoleon. It was a time of war and tyranny and terror, when the collecting of a few old half-forgotten tales was all the young Grimm brothers could do to resist the oppressive rule of the French. As she tells the stories to Wilhelm, their love blossoms, but the Grimm family is desperately poor, and Dortchen’s father has other plans for his daughter. Marriage is an impossible dream. Dortchen can only hope that happy endings are not just the stuff of fairy tales.

Bitter Greens
Allison & Busby, 2013; ISBN 9780749013233
Three women, three lives, three stories. The stories of Margherita, Selena, and Charlotte-Rose, the woman who penned Rapunzel as we now know it, are braided together to create a sumptuous historical novel, an enchanting fairy tale retelling, and a loving tribute to the imagination of one remarkable woman. French novelist Charlotte-Rose Caumont de la Force is banished from the court of Versailles after a series of scandalous love affairs. At the convent, an old nun tells her the tale of Margherita, a young girl who a hundred years earlier was sold by her parents for a handful of bitter greens. After Margherita’s father stole parsley, wintercress and rapunzel from the walled garden of the courtesan Selena Leonelli – the famous red-haired m use of the artist Tiziano – he was threatened with having both hands cut off, unless he and his wife relinquished their precious little girl. Locked away in a tower, Margherita sings in the hope that someone will hear her. One day, a young man does.