6741
British-Australian author Kathy Lette first achieved succès de scandale as a teenager with the novel Puberty Blues, which was made into a major film and a TV mini-series.
After several years as a newspaper columnist and television sitcom writer for Columbia Pictures in America, she wrote numerous international bestsellers including Mad Cows (which was made into a film starring Joanna Lumley and Anna Friel), How to Kill Your Husband and Other Handy Household Hints (recently staged by the Victorian Opera, Australia), To Love, Honour and Betray and “The Boy Who Fell To Earth” (soon to be filmed by Emily Mortimer).
Her novels have been published in seventeen languages around the world.
Kathy appears regularly as a guest on the BBC and Sky News. She is also an ambassador for Women and Children First, Plan International and the White Ribbon Alliance.
She describes herself as an ‘autodidact’ (a word she taught herself) but in 2010, received an honorary doctorate from Southampton Solent University.
In recognition of her many novels and advocacy of equality, human rights, and physical and mental health both nationally and internationally, Lette was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters (Honoris Causa) from the University of Wollongong.
She cites her career highlights as once teaching Stephen Fry a word, Salman Rushdie, the limbo and scripting Julian Assange’s cameo in the Simpsons 500th episode.