Who is Cath Crowley?: Background information when reading A Little Wanting Song

Who is Cath Crowley?

This article relates to A Little Wanting Song

A Little Wanting Song left me wanting to know more about author Cath Crowley, but the biographical information immediately at hand was a little light, so I did some digging....

Cath Crowley is an Australian children's author. She was born in 1971 and grew up in a rural part of Victoria (SE Australia) with three brothers and a dog.

Although she told stories all the time, she never wrote any of them down and did not plan on being a writer. Then she moved to Europe and began writing letters to her brother, Anthony Crowley. Her letters were a sort of journal and she even wrote "Don't tell anyone this" at the top of them. Anthony did not quite heed her request. When she came back home she discovered that he had used her letters to create a musical, The Journey Girl, which was performed at three theaters in Melbourne! This experience, Cath says, is what convinced her that she wanted to become a writer.

Her first book, The Life and Times of Gracie Faltrain, was published in 2004 and was quite successful. She has written five other books since, two of which are part of the Gracie Faltrain series.

A Little Wanting Song, a stand-alone novel and Cath's US debut, was published in Australia in 2005 under the name Chasing Charlie Duskin. She revised it for US readers, which gave her the unusual opportunity to go back and edit a story that was already finished - an experience she enjoyed. She says in an interview, "in the US version, Charlie still wants things, but she has a stronger sense of self. She's a bit sassier. A bit cooler." The American version also includes song lyrics written by Charlie and more details about the characters.

Like A Little Wanting Song, Cath Crowley's latest book, Graffiti Moon, is told from multiple points of view. Currently only available in Australia (the US version is due out February 2012), it follows four teenagers as they discover - in an action-packed 24 hours - who they are and who they want to be.

Filed under Books and Authors

This "beyond the book article" relates to A Little Wanting Song. It originally ran in September 2010 and has been updated for the October 2011 paperback edition. Go to magazine.