Kathleen Jennings Kathleen Jennings i(A102611 works by)
Gender: Female
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BiographyHistory

Kathleen Jennings is a writer and illustrator who grew up in Western Queensland.

Jennings' illustration work has won Ditmar Awards and been shortlisted for three World Fantasy Awards. She has illustrated for various Australian and international publishers and periodicals, including Tor.com, Small Beer Press, Subterranean Press, Tartarus Press, Ticonderoga Publications, FableCroft Press, Odyssey Press, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild. She has also produced a number of collaborative works with Angela Slatter.

In addition to illustration, Jennings also writes short works, including comics. Her short comics include the steampunk 'Finishing School : A Colonial Adventure' and 'A Small Wild Magic', which was a finalist in the Aurealis Awards.

In 2017, she was one of the illustrators (along with American illustrator Cassandra Jean) on the tenth-anniversary edition of American novelist Cassandra Clare's City of Bones, the first in her best-selling Mortal Instruments trilogy. She also drew the internal maps for American author Holly Black's The Cruel Prince (2018) and The Wicked King (2019), and produced both the cover art and internal illustrations for Kij Johnson's The River Bank (2017), a sequel to Wind in the Willows. In 2019, she illustrated Aidan Doyle's The Writer's Book of Doubt.

In 2019, she was one of the judges for the World Fantasy Awards.

Most Referenced Works

On the Web

Personal Awards

2021 nominated Ditmar Awards — William Atheling Jr Award for “Contracts and Calcifer, or “In Which A Contract Is Concluded Before Witnesses”: the transactional structure of Howl’s Moving Castle”, The Proceedings of the Diana Wynne Jones Conference, Bristol 2019
2021 winner Ditmar Awards — Best Artwork for 'Mother Thorn and Other Tales of Courage and Kindness'.
2021 finalist Locus Awards — Artist
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Awards for Works

Science Fiction for Hire? Notes Towards an Emerging Practice of Creative Futurism 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , October vol. 27 no. 2 2023; 'This article introduces the term creative futurism to distinguish a type of speculative writing from traditional creative writing practices, specifically those of science fiction. Creative futurism is not a clearly defined field or method of practice but rather a loose array of approaches, examples and contexts, often involving collaborations between writers and stakeholders from other fields. We define it as work which is futures- oriented, uses elements of the traditional creative writing skillset, but is constrained by an additional set of parameters (their purpose, context and requirements). To support this definition, science fiction author Joanne Anderton discusses her experience writing creative, near-future scenarios about the deployment of drones for Trusted Autonomous Systems (a kind of creative futurism in practice). She outlines how she and her stakeholders conceptualised the writing and how she applied traditional creative writing skills within this context. Building upon this, author and critic Kathleen Jennings identifies aesthetic features of traditionally published examples of creative futurism: its heightened focus on technology, its realist-rationalist tone, and the resulting subordination of other aspects of craft such as characterisation. We conclude by discussing aspects of writing practice that might be applied in the future to energise this new form of writing.' (Publication abstract) 
2023 winner Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction — Peter McNamara Convenors' Award
Merry in Time 2022 single work novella fantasy
— Appears in: Beneath Ceaseless Skies , no. 352 2022;
2022 shortlisted Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction — Fantasy Division — Novella
y separately published work icon Mother Thorn and Other Tales of Courage Waikiki : Serenity Press , 2021 21211168 2021 selected work short story

'Walk into a fairy tale world that’s not quite what you might expect.

'Lara’s life of lonely drudgery changes when she gains an unlikely friend and learns that acts of kindness can bring their own rewards. High-born Niamh knows the kennel boy is her soulmate, but when she seeks help from the Otherworld, her future takes a surprising turn. Bella runs away from home on a stormy night and finds shelter in a strange old house, where she meets a shy kitchen hand, his autocratic mother, and a mouse. Young soldier Katrin makes her weary way homeward after a terrible defeat. A chance encounter with an old woman plunges Katrin into an adventure involving dogs, treasure and a lost tinder box.

'These four tales celebrate courage and kindness. They are about being to true to yourself and recognising the good in others.'

Source : publisher's blurb
2020 finalist Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction — Best Collection
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Last amended 19 Oct 2021 10:16:43
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