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About Katrina

Writing

Katrina Kell is an award-winning Australian writer. Her new historical novel Chloé (2024) was inspired by one of Australia’s most iconic paintings. Created in Paris by Jules Joseph Lefebvre in 1875, Chloé has graced the walls of Young and Jackson Hotel since 1909 and is now a much-loved cultural icon. “Having a drink with Chloé” has been a good luck ritual for Australian soldiers since WWI, a tradition that has continued throughout the decades.

Katrina’s short stories, poetry and essays have been published in anthologies and literary journals including Westerly, Text, Raudem and Index, and her journalism has appeared in various media, including The Conversation. She is the author of two young adult novels, Juice and Mama’s Trippin’, and was the winner of an Australian Society of Authors Award Mentorship for the unpublished manuscript of Chloé. Her PhD thesis, Capturing Chloé: Reimagining a Melbourne Icon, explores the myths and volatile history of the iconic nude painting and its model.  

Katrina lives and works on the unceded lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people.

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Research

Place Blanche in Montmartre was defended by an all-female battalion during the repression of the Paris Commune in 1871, a violent episode in modern French history when up to 30,000 Parisians were slaughtered by Versailles government troops during Semaine Sanglante (the Bloody Week). Katrina took this photograph on one of her research trips to Paris. She was intrigued by the Chloé graffiti at a site with strong significance to the young model who sat for Chloé (1875).

To learn more about the tumultuous times Chloé‘s Parisian model lived through, see Katrina’s essay Evanescence of an Artist’s Model: Jules Lefebvre’s Chloé in Issue 1, Identity, INDEX JOURNAL.

During a field research trip to France, Katrina visited the Musée Somme 1916 in Albert. Exploring the underground tunnels and life-like dioramas of World War I trenches and dugouts was a confronting and humbling experience. The sketch pictured below, drawn by a soldier in WWI, inspired a scene in her novel Chloé where teenage soldiers Paddy and Rory share their whittled figurine of Chloé with fellow diggers during a break from the fighting.