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Lee Cataldi was born in Sydney. Her father was an Italian. Thus she was born an enemy alien, but by the time she entered the education system she was as Australian as anyone else. She went to school in Hobart in Tasmania, to university in Sydney, and has worked as a teacher in Sydney, and in Lajamanu, in the Northern Territory. Later she worked as a linguist, documenting indigenous Australian languages, in Alice Springs and in Halls Creek. Between 1964 and 1973 she lived in Italy and in England. Since May 1968 she has been an active socialist. Invitation to a Marxist Lesbian Party won the Anne Elder Memorial Prize, and The Women who Live on the Ground won the Human Rights' Commission Prize for Literature. Race Against Time won the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Poetry in 1999. In 1998 she was an Asialink Writer in Residence in India. She is currently working on a dictionary of the Ngardi language spoken by people living in the north-eastern part of Western Australia, in Balgo, Ringer Soak and Billiluna. |
