I grew up in the nineties in Stratford-on-Avon, a small town in the West Midlands best known as Shakespeare’s birthplace. I studied American literature at UEA and lived in Norwich for ten years, before moving to London in 2014. I’m currently co-manager of an independent bookshop in King’s Cross, Housmans, which specialises in radical politics – things like feminism, socialism, anti-fascism, anarchism and LGBTQIA politics. I also help to organise the Little Rebels Award for Radical Children’s Fiction, with Letterbox Library. I live in North London with my partner and a lot of books, guitars and half-dead plants.
I published my first YA novel, Troublemakers, in 2017. Troublemakers found a home with Andersen Press after being shortlisted for the inaugural Bath Novel Award, and went on to be shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, longlisted for the Branford Boase Award and receive a starred review in Kirkus, among other nice things.
I love horror movies, and I still listen to all the same music I did in 2002.
Like most writers, I love reading! I post about the books I’ve been enjoying recently over on Goodreads. A few of my all-time favourite include anything by Colson Whitehead, Jennifer Egan, Tana French or Maggie Nelson, David Foster Wallace’s essays, the Neopolitan novels by Elena Ferrante, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume, and everything in the Point Horror canon.
catherine-barter.com 