Quick Facts
Biography
Catriona (Cat) Sparks (born 11 September 1965, Sydney, New South Wales) is an Australian science fiction writer, editor and publisher.
As manager and editor of Agog! Press with her partner, Australian horror writer Rob Hood, Sparks has produced ten anthologies of speculative fiction. She is also a writer, graphic designer, photographer and desktop publisher, with stories and artwork appearing in a selection of magazines and anthologies. She has won thirteen Ditmar Awards for writing, editing and artwork, her most recent in 2014, when her short story Scarp was awarded a Ditmar for Best Short Story and 'The Bride Price' one for Best Collected Work. She was nominated for the Aurealis Peter McNamara Convenors' Award for Excellence in 2003 and won one in 2004 for services to the Australian SF publishing industry. In 2006 Sparks was convenor of the Horror judging panel of the Aurealis Awards, and in 2008 she was Guest of Honour at the Conflux 5 Science Fiction Convention in Canberra.
Sparks has concentrated on her writing in recent years. In 2004 Sparks graduated the inaugural Clarion South Writers' Workshop in Queensland and won third prize in the first quarter of the Writers of the Future competition. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Aurealis Awards in 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008. Her short story Hollywood Roadkill won both the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story and the Golden Aurealis Award in the 2007 Aurealis Awards. Her short story Seventeen won the Aurealis Award for Best Science young Adult Short Story in the 2009 Aurealis Awards.
In 2010 Sparks was announced as the new Fiction Editor of Cosmos magazine replacing Damien Broderick. Cosmos Magazine ceased publication of short fiction in 2016.
In January 2012 she was one of 12 students chosen to participate in Margaret Atwood’s The Time Machine Doorway workshop as part of the Key West Literary Seminar Yet Another World: literature of the future. Her participation was funded by an Australia Council emerging writers grant.
In 2012 she became a provisional candidate for a Doctorate of Philosophy – Media, Culture and Creative Arts through Curtin University.
Her 2013 collection The Bride Price won the Ditmar Award for Best Collection.
An active member of Science Fiction Writers of America, her fiction is represented by Jill Grinberg Literary Management, New York.
Her debut novel, Lotus Blue, was published by Talos Press in February 2017. Lotus Blue has been described as “Mad Max meets Terminator meets Ghost in the Shell.”