Penmanship

Kate Hennessy is a freelance writer and editor. I first read Kate's work in about 2009, when we were both contributors to the Australian music website Mess+Noise, where she was a critic and feature writer whose work I admired greatly from afar, since she was based in Sydney. It wasn't until 2016 that we met for the first time, at the Rock & Roll Writers Festival in Brisbane, where we were both guest speakers. In the intervening years since I first saw her byline, Kate has worked as a music and arts critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Guardian Australia and The Quietus, among others, as well as travel writing for a range of Australian and overseas publications. Outside of freelancing, she works in corporate writing and editing, and teaches courses on music journalism and professional business writing. It was the latter skillset that brought Kate to Brisbane in mid-May, and we met at her hotel room so I could ask her a few questions over a bottle of white wine. Our conversation touches on how she lear