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about the authors & works
Catherine McNamara
Catherine McNamara is a good example of today’s European.
Now an Italian citizen and living in Italy, she is originally from
Sydney, Australia, spent the bulk of her adult life in Europe, and
considers herself a European adoptee. Moving first to Paris as a
student, she worked as an au pair for a theatrical family, taught
English in Milan, then moved to pre-war Somalia and worked in
an embassy. She has since lived in Brussels, in northern Italy, and
nine years in Ghana, where she co-ran a bar and traditional art
gallery. Italian is her day-to-day language, although she writes in
English.
Her collection
Pelt and Other Stories
was longlisted for the Frank
O’Connor International Short Story Award 2014 and semi-finalist
in the Hudson Prize 2011. Her story “Magaly Park” was nominated
for a Pushcart prize last year, and she has recently been shortlisted
for the Hilary Mantel/KWS Short Story Competition, the Short
Fiction International Short Story Competition, the Labello Press
Short Story Competition and the Love on the Road Short Story
Competition. She has work forthcoming or published in Ambit,
Structo, Wasafiri, Short Fiction, A Tale of Two Cities and Two Thirds
North (Stockholm University). Her debut novel was published in
2012.
‘Astragal’ is set in the Italian Dolomites.