Catriona Sparks
Australian writer
Catriona "Cat" Sparks (born 11 September 1965, Sydney, New South Wales) is an Australian science fiction writer, editor and publisher.
Publishing
As manager and editor of Agog! Press with her partner, Australian horror writer Rob Hood, Sparks has produced ten anthologies of speculative fiction.
Writing
She has won thirteen Ditmar Awards for writing, editing and artwork, her most recent in 2014, when her short story Scarp was awarded a Ditmar for Best Short Story and 'The Bride Price' one for Best Collected Work.
She was nominated for the Aurealis Peter McNamara Convenors' Award for Excellence in 2003 and won one in 2004 for services to the Australian SF publishing industry. In 2006 Sparks was convenor of the Horror judging panel of the Aurealis Awards, and in 2008 she was Guest of Honour at the Conflux 5 Science Fiction Convention in Canberra.
Sparks has concentrated on her writing in recent years. In 2004 Sparks graduated the inaugural Clarion South Writers' Workshop in Queensland and won third prize in the first quarter of the Writers of the Future competition. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Aurealis Awards in 2004, 2005, 2007 and 2008. Her short story Hollywood Roadkill won both the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Short Story and the Golden Aurealis Award in the 2007 Aurealis Awards.
“Catriona Sparks” enters the record as australian writer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Catriona, Sparks and Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Catriona Sparks” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Catriona, Sparks and Australian provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5053975. VIAF identifies the subject as 305410811. The Library of Congress control number is no2013121426. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 2014, 2003 and 2004.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Catriona Sparks”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Catriona Sparks primary sources, Catriona Sparks archive and Catriona research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Catriona Sparks”?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Catriona Sparks” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.