Catherine Cole

Catherine Cole is a Governor on the LJMU Board of Governors and Associate Dean, Research in the Faculty of Art, Professional and Social Studies. As Professor of Creative Writing in the LJMU Screen School she leads the MA Writing and postgraduate research programs. Catherine has published 4 novels, (Dry Dock, Skin Deep (Harper Collins 1999 and Duffy and Snellgrove, 2002) and The Grave at Thu Le, Picador, 2006), Sleep (UWA Publishing, 2020) two non-fiction books, (Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction (Curtin University Press, 1996) and a memoir about her friendship with the late Australian poet, AD Hope, The Poet Who Forgot (UWA Press, 2008) She is the editor of the anthology, The Perfume River: Writing from Vietnam (UWA Press, 2010) and co-editor with McNeil and Karaminas of Fashion in Fiction: Text and Clothing in Literature, Film and Television, (Berg UK and USA, May 2009). Her poetry, short stories, essays and reviews have been published in Australia and internationally and produced by BBC Radio 4. Her collection of short stories - Sea Birds crying in the Harbour Dark - was published to acclaim in 2017.
She has supervised to completion the Doctorates and MAs of more than 30 students in the UK and Australia including many of Australia’s leading and emerging writers.

Catherine has twice been a member of the Australian Research Council's Excellence in Research Australia research evaluation committee (ERA) in Humanities and the Creative Arts and has provided expert advice to a range of Australian, UK and other international universities on their research and creative practice activities. She is a peer reviewer for the Literature Board of the Australian Council for the Arts. She is a regular book reviewer, participant in Australian and international writers' festivals and a judge of major national book awards. She has been a writer in residence in China, France, Vietnam, UK and Australia and a Visiting Fellow at the University of East Anglia.

She was formerly Deputy Dean of the Faculty Creative Arts and has played a senior management role in university governance in each of the universities at which she worked. She previously was Professor of Creative Writing, RMIT University in Melbourne and a Senior Lecturer University of Technology, Sydney and Lecturer, University of UNSW. She has academic relationships with a range of international universities and is regularly invited to review the writing and creative arts programs of universities in Australia and overseas. She also advises tertiary and secondary institutions about teaching and learning in the creative arts. During the past nine years she has secured $514,000 for research projects and other project activities within creative writing.

Catherine's research interests include:
• Creative Writing
• Historical Fiction
• Postcolonial fiction
• Memoir and Life Writing
• Crime Fiction and True Crime
• Poetry
• Short fiction
• Asia Pacific writing
• Creative communities
• Australian/French cultural relationship