Kate Kemp: 'Believe you have something to say'
BY Maya Fernandes
13th Mar 2025
Kate Kemp was a student on our six-month online Writing Your Novel course in 2019. We caught up to discuss her debut novel, The Grapevine – out now from Phoenix Books.
Read on to discover Kate’s top tips for creating morally ambiguous characters and the mystery novels that she can’t wait to read this year.
Kate, you took our six-month online Writing Your Novel course in 2019. How did your time studying with us impact your writing approach?
Being on the course was a time of experimentation. I had a go at anything that was suggested, and while some of those suggestions sent me way off track, everything I tried led to me learning something useful. I’ve realised that there are no short cuts to learning the craft of writing. You only find out what works through doing the work.
Many of our students go on to form lasting friendships during our courses. Do you keep in touch with anyone you met on the course?
Yes, those of us who have kept in touch have developed a wonderful group, full of support, humour, cheerleading and friendship. Quite a few of us met up at the launch of Ian Russell-Hsieh’s book, I’m New Here. It’s an extraordinary book about deconstructing and rebuilding identity and it was exciting to celebrate a publication from our cohort.
What inspired you to choose 1970s Australia as the setting for The Grapevine and how does the era have an influence on the story's dynamics?
The idea for The Grapevine came to me after I’d had risk-reducing surgery because of a family history of cancer. My mum had died too soon for science to give her the same chance, and I was wishing I could ask her about what life was like for her and other women when she was my age. At that time, we lived on a cul-de-sac in Canberra very similar to Warrah Place in The Grapevine. So, that was the inspiration. But as I wrote, I became increasingly fascinated with the political, social and cultural context of Australia in the late 1970s and how a country on the cusp of change might be experienced in suburban life.
Context is such an important part of how we derive meaning from our experiences and how we construct our identities. The Grapevine, at its heart, is about women wanting to reinvent themselves and one of the main characters, twelve-year-old Tammy, is a girl searching for an identity to claim as her own. The dynamics shown in the novel and the options available to different characters are firmly embedded within the cultural discourses of that time and place.
The Grapevine is full of complex, morally ambiguous characters. What was your process for giving depth to these characters?
I’m mindful of the process of othering, how easy it is to deposit a set of traits in others. And I think part of how we connect with the humanity of each other across differences is in recognising that we all contain multitudes. Even if it didn’t make it onto the page, I wrote backstories for each character that lent coherence to their patterns of behaviour, choices, motivations, interiority and what different circumstances would evoke in them.
I did a lot of research into the contexts in which they grew up, including those who had emigrated to Australia from other countries. A few times I had to rewrite backstories when it wasn’t plausible that a character would do what the plot required of them. As I was interested in exploring what life was like for women who occupied various spaces where gender intersects with race, sexual orientation, age, class, religion and mental health, I was writing about women who were different from me. I found it helpful to draw on my own experiences, for example, of menopause and miscarriage, as a starting point and then consider how the characters would experience and respond to these things in a different way given their temperament, previous experiences and circumstances.
Your novel has been praised for its astute social commentary on human behaviour. How did your background as a systemic psychotherapist influence the psychological elements of your characters?
There are so many parallels between being a psychotherapist and being a writer, and I feel that using my training and experience to write fiction is the perfect fit for me. There are many ways in which the theories that underpin systemic psychotherapy apply to characterisation, but probably the most helpful one is seeing people as relational beings. That’s why it was important to me to write about a community and have an ensemble cast where a number of characters get their turn in the spotlight. We get to see how characters choose to present themselves but also how they are perceived and positioned by others.
My work has made me curious about how we make meaning of our lives, how we know ourselves through the stories we tell about ourselves and that are told about us, how some stories become dominant and others subjugated, how we get recruited into believing some stories and not others, and how we can go about reauthoring the stories that don’t serve us. I’m fascinated by the potency of language, to not just describe our reality but to create it, how every utterance contributes to the power structures within which we all live. It’s no wonder that a lot of the shifts in dynamics in The Grapevine happen through characters talking with each other, how they talk, what they don’t say, and who gets to be a part of the conversation.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers, especially those tackling their first mystery novel?
Believe you have something to say that is worth being heard. That will sustain you through the hard slog of finishing a book.
Become intensely interested in your own writing process and get to know it intimately. The way other people write can be useful up to a point, in that it can encourages you to try new things and reflect on how you work, but other than that, it’s just a distraction. No one knows better than you what works best for you, what gets in the way and how to work around other things in your life.
One of the most useful things I did early on was be clear and specific about what I wanted and what the stakes were. I wanted a professional identity as a writer and to have professional relationships with people who stimulated me intellectually and creatively. Before I got my agent and a publishing deal, I knew they were high stakes and unlikely to be realised, so I looked for other ways to find value in what I was doing. Having now got what I wanted and in abundance, I find it very grounding to remind myself and stay focused on what I originally wanted and why it was important to me.
In terms of writing a mystery novel, sure, mysteries need to have an element of surprise, but equally important is a sense of coherence, of things making sense. If someone tells us something important about themselves, we connect with them when we can say, ah yes, I can see how it’s like that for you. It’s the same with stories. If you have a plot in mind, ask yourself: in what context does it make sense for these things to happen? That will help your reader connect with the story and the characters.
Are there any mystery novels on your ‘to be read’ list that you’re excited about?
I’m very excited to read advance copies of The Show Woman by Emma Cowing (out May 2025) and A Murder for Miss Hortense by Mel Pennant (out June 2025) that I’ve been sent.
I also have Gunnewah by Ronni Salt and Into the River by Mark Brandi lined up to keep me immersed in Australia.
And finally, what’s next for your writing journey?
I’m in the thick of writing my second novel. I’m interested in exploring intimacy in various forms and its relationship to belonging, loyalty and obligation.
Get your hands on a copy of The Grapevine.
The books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our bookshop.org page.