Kate Orman grew up in Australia and the United States, moving back to Sydney later in her life. She was involved in the Doctor Who Club of Australia and edited its magazine, Dark Circus. She is the first woman and also the first non-British author to have a book published in the Doctor Who: The New Adventures series. As well as having written several novels, she has been widely published in science-fiction anthologies.
In 2017, she contributed to the Black Archive (a series of critical works on Doctor Who episodes), writing on the 1975 serial Pyramids of Mars.