Nancy Cato - Literary Career

Literary Career

With Roland Robinson and Kevin Collopy, in 1948 Cato was one of the founding members of the Lyre-Bird Writers, an independent and cooperative group that formed to publish verse by Australian writers. As a member of the Jindyworobak Movement, Cato edited the 1950 Jindyworobak Anthology, one of a series of anthologies produced to promote indigenous Australian ideas and customs, particularly in poetry. She was actively involved in the Fellowship of Australian Writers and the Australian Society of Authors during the 1950s and 1960s.

Cato's most famous work is her trilogy, known as All the Rivers Run. It was originally published as three separate volumes: All the Rivers Run (1958), Time, Flow Softly (1959) and But Still the Stream (1962). However, since the 1970s it has been generally published as one large volume containing the three books. It was made into a TV mini-series All the Rivers Run, which was broadcast in 1983.

Cato's other books include: Green Grows The Vine, Brown Sugar and Mister Maloga, which tells the story of Daniel Matthews and his Maloga Mission to Aboriginal people on the Murray River in Victoria.