ASA Spotlight: Cath Moore, PM’s literary award 2021 in Young Adult fiction

Our January 2022 Member Spotlight features Cath Moore, who was announced as the winner of the 2021 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Young Adult Literature for her novel Metal Fish, Falling Snow!

Of Afro-Caribbean and Anglo-Irish heritage, Cath Moore graduated from AFTRS with a Masters in screenwriting and holds a PhD in Danish screenwriting practices. An award-winning screenwriter Cath has also worked in the screen industry as a story consultant. She has written for print media including The Age, The Huffington Post and SBS Life. Cath was a contributing author to the anthology Growing Up African in Australia and her first novel Metal Fish Falling Snow won the 2021 Victorian and Queensland Premier’s and Prime Minister’s Award for Young Adult Literature.

Check out more details here: https://www.asauthors.org/news/member-spotlight-cath-moore

What do you know now that you wish you’d known at the beginning of your writing journey?

That finding faith is one thing but holding onto it is hard. I wish that I’d spent less time worrying about what other people thought or adhering to prescriptive notions about what it meant to be a writer. I wish I had spent less time trying to follow paths that weren’t mine to follow, and more time dedicated to honouring my own viewpoint and histories. I wish I’d asked more questions about the lack of diversity in the publishing industry and known sooner that I could be part of the systemic change slowly taking hold now. I wish that I had known that it only takes one person to connect with and shepherd your work into being, and that finding an incredible editor like Jane Pearson and publishing team like Text would put all the knockbacks into perspective.

Find out more about Cath Moore here: https://www.cathmoorewrites.org/