About

Pedigree

the condensed background of Cat Delaney

Cat Delaney is a Renaissance woman whose focus is and always has been in writing. She is accomplished, prolific, creative and diverse in her body of work.

Her writing spans many forms, including poetry, for which she has won numerous awards and inclusion in compendiums, films, magazine and newspaper articles, essays, novels and novel series, nonfiction books, and plays for the stage; in 2009 she won the prestigious Samuel French award for Canadian playwriting for her social satire, Welfarewell, now available in three languages through Concord Theatricals.

Widely travelled and having lived in various places on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, Cat was born in the United Kingdom and presently makes her home in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, Canada, with her collection of mad proofreading cats.

Educated largely in the Toronto area, Cat attended the University of Toronto (Erindale), the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University), Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University), Three Schools of Fine Art, and, by correspondence, Athabasca University. Her areas of study were English Literature, Film Arts, History, Philosophy and Drama.

Cat's Stats

Born: Long Eaton, England
Date of Birth: July 9th, a long time ago
Education: all over the map, but no geography degree
Languages: hopefully English; working knowledge of French; can swear in Italian
Claim to Fame: lives in a cathouse, but is not a hooker
Favourite Writers: Ian McEwan, Anne Enwright, Jean-Paul Sartre, James Joyce, Julian Barnes, Lesley Choyce, Maggie O'Farrell, Tom Stoppard
Favourite Artists: J.W. Waterhouse, John Everett Millais, Daniel Paul Izzard, Rudolf Kurz, Ted Nasmith, Shelley Mansell
Favourite Films: The Legend of 1900, Babe, Stage Beauty, Truly Madly Deeply, Callas Forever, 8 Women, Water, The Shape of Water, Hamnet, Cairo Time
Favourite Musicians: Daniel Lanois, Ray Montford, Oscar Lopez, Southside Johnny, Enya
Favourite Sports: Formula One, and to a lesser degree, tennis and horse racing
Pastimes: archery, badminton, fencing, walking, wine-making, visual art, reading, movies, live theatre

Awards Won by Cat Delaney

• the 2009 Samuel French Canadian Playwriting Competition
• the 2007 Elora Writers' Festival for poetry
• the Simpson's Drama Festival for her play A Beggar's Dream
• staged workshop in 2004 of her site-specific play The Death of Honour for the Alumni Theatre (Toronto) Playwriting Contest
• nominated in 2004 for Woman of the Year in the arts category, Stratford, Ontario

Cat Delaney has written four non-fiction books, 11 novels, 32 stage plays and 35 screenplays, some of which have been optioned by film production companies.

Encapsulated Publishing History

Cat Delaney, sometimes writing under her pseudonyms, Pamela Delaney or Pamela Snow, has been published widely in periodicals. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, the Guelph Mercury, Homemakers Magazine, Formula, Performance Racing News, Dogs in Canada, Pets Magazine, Canadian Property Management Magazine, Spalife, North American Inns, CanPlay, Coastal Life, and Condominium, among many others. She shot photographs and wrote the copy for two editions of the Michelin Green Guides and DK Eyewitness travel guidebooks. Her first article was published in the Toronto Star newspaper when she was 17 years old.

In 2003-05, Cat was co-artistic director and producer, with highly regarded actor, writer and director, Leon Pownall, for a small independent theatre company, PostScript Productions, located in Stratford. In its first season, PostScript staged Leon's Do Not Go Gentle, and Michael Mercer's Goodnight Disgrace. The company closed shop upon the untimely death of Mr. Pownall in 2006, but the second season included Cat's epic historical play, A Man of Letters, about the sole regret of Dr. Samuel "Dictionary" Johnson, which Mr. Pownall was set to direct and star in.