 Kate Holden is the author of In My Skin: A memoir (Text Publishing 2005/2007), about her years as a heroin addict and prostitute in Melbourne. At the age of 24, having just finished a university degree in literature and classics, Kate walked into a room where she took heroin for the first time. She endured sorrow and pain, distressed her loving family, became homeless, lost her job and all her money, endangered her health and risked her life. She worked as a street prostitute through a winter and then in a series of brothels; she tried again and again to get off the drugs. She met extraordinary people and discovered more about herself. Kate has been clean now for nearly a decade and believes her recovery was a combination of fortune, assistance from others, and belief in herself. What she has to say about addicts, sex workers, and others we often think of as ‘other people’, not us, will surprise you.
Kate began the new part of her life by enrolling in a writing course and starting to put down her experiences in the belief that she had learned some important lessons, and to explain what it felt like to be ‘on the skids’. First published in 2005 and re-issued in 2007, her best-selling memoir was shortlisted for awards in Australia, and has since been sold to the USA, the UK, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Brazil, France and Italy. It was part of the Books Alive Great Read promotion in 2006, and voted by readers one of the State Library of Victoria’s top 5 titles in ‘The Summer Read’ program in 2007. Kate has received hundreds of messages from readers all over the world and exceptional reviews in newspapers throughout Europe and America. Her story is one that touches those who know nothing of street life, those who do, and everyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to lose almost everything—and find it again.
With In My Skin Kate gained a new career. She and her family featured in an episode of Australian Story (ABC) in 2005. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies including Some Girls Do (Allen & Unwin), Sleepers Almanac 2007, Thanks for the Mammaries (Penguin) and The Big Issue.
She is regularly asked to speak at writers festivals, libraries and private events. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and RMIT, where she has recently completed a Master of Arts in Creative Writing. She is on the CAL Second Book Fellowship at Varuna, the Writers’ House, and in 2008 she took up an Australia Council for the Arts residency at the B. R. Whiting Library in Rome. She spent a week as Writer in Residence at Methodist Ladies College in 2006.
She talks candidly of her time on the street, the issues of addiction and what happens to a family when a daughter seems to become a dangerous stranger. She has a lot to say about how sex work illustrates human relationships, and how there is the possibility of tenderness and intimacy even between anonymous strangers in the right setting. Her story is painful at times but ultimately uplifting. She also speaks about writing: the art of creating a memoir, what it is like to look back on a difficult time, and her new projects of novel-writing and her popular column in The Age.
Kate is an engaging, personable speaker who enjoys sharing her story and encouraging audiences to share their own.
Kate's new book, The Romantic, will be published October 2010.
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