literary fiction from the 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction shortlisted author, Catherine Cole
“I read a lot of good books for work. Even great books. Just occasionally something truly special comes alone. Sleep by Catherine Cole is one such book.” Better Reading magazine
When schoolgirl Ruth Fox meets the artist Harry Luby in a London cafe the two strike up an unconventional friendship. Harry recognises something in Ruth that links with his own past: both have lost members of their family in tragic circumstances.
But does talking about the past really help people to get over their grief or is revenge a better option?
As she prepares to take Harry back to Paris for the first time since he left the city, a much older Ruth reflects on life's often cruel lessons and the ways through which art helps us to transcend them.
Sleep is a novel that explores memory and loss, but with a message of hope. It shows the reader how life can be transformed through art and by letting go of what you can't change or get back.
“…. Catherine Cole’s writing is beautiful, full of intelligence and grace, and always suggestively understated.” Kerryn Goldsworthy, The Canberra Times

Catherine Cole (who has also written under the name Cathy Cole) is Professor in Creative Writing in The Screen School, Liverpool John Moores University where she is also a member of the university’s Board of Governors. She is an Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Wollongong in Australia . She has published 4 novels, (Dry Dock, Skin Deep (Harper Collins 1999 and Duffy and Snellgrove, 2002) and The Grave at Thu Le, Picador, 2006, Sleep, UWAP, 2019), two non-fiction books, (Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction (Curtin University Press, 1996) and a memoir about her friendship with the late Australian poet, AD Hope, The Poet Who Forgot (UWA Press, 2008) She is the editor of the anthology, The Perfume River: Writing from Vietnam (UWA Press, 2010) and co-editor with McNeil and Karaminas of Fashion in Fiction: Text and Clothing in Literature, Film and Television, (Berg UK and USA, May 2009). Her poetry, short stories, essays and reviews have been published in Australia and internationally and produced by BBC Radio 4. Her collection of short stories - Sea Birds crying in the Harbour Dark - was published in late 2017.

She has supervised to completion the Doctorates and MAs of more than 30 students in the UK and Australia - including many of Australia’s leading and emerging writers.

Catherine has twice been a member of the Australian Research Council's Excellence in Research Australia research evaluation committee (ERA) in Humanities and the Creative Arts and has provided expert advice to a range of Australian, UK and other international universities on their research and creative practice activities. She is a peer reviewer for the Literature Board of the Australian Council for the Arts. She is a regular book reviewer, participant in Australian and international writers' festivals and a judge of major national book awards. She has been a writer in residence in China, France, Vietnam, UK and Australia and a Visiting Fellow at the University of East Anglia.

She was formerly Deputy Dean of the Faculty Creative Arts and has played a senior management role in university governance in each of the universities at which she worked. She previously was Professor of Creative Writing, RMIT University in Melbourne and a Senior Lecturer University of Technology, Sydney and Lecturer, University of UNSW. She has academic relationships with a range of international universities and is regularly invited to review the writing and creative arts programs of universities in Australia and overseas. She also advises tertiary and secondary institutions about teaching and learning in the creative arts. During the past nine years she has secured $514,000 for research projects and other project activities within creative writing.

Catherine's research interests include:
• Creative Writing
• Historical Fiction
• Postcolonial fiction
• Memoir and Life Writing
• Crime Fiction and True Crime
• Poetry
• Short fiction
• Asia Pacific writing
• Creative communities
• Australian/French cultural relationship