Kate De Goldi was born in 1959 in Christchurch. Kate launched her career in 1988 by winning the American Express Short Story Award, and three years later won the BNZ/Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award. Her first novel, Like You, Really, was published in 1994 under the pseudonym Kate Flannery. Her stories are about contemporary teenagers and their struggle to craft their identity both inside and outside the family dynamic, are set in her native South Island, in Canterbury or Westland. Kate has written three books for young adults: Sanctuary (1996), which won the New Zealand Post Senior Fiction Award and the Esther Glen medal; Love, Charlie Mike, which was short-listed in the 1998 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards, and Closed, Stranger, which took out the Honours Award in the same competition (2000).
Kate is a regular reviewer of children's books on National Radio's Kim Hill programme. Her books for young adults are published internationally and regularly feature on school curricula in both New Zealand and across the Tasman. In 2015 her title From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle, made the New Zealand best Seller List.
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