Kathleen Kylie Tennant AO (12 March 1912 – 28 February 1988) was an Australian novelist, playwright, short-story writer, critic, biographer, and historian.

Early life and career

Tennant was born in Manly, New South Wales; she was educated at Brighton College in Manly and Sydney University, though she left without graduating. She was a publicity officer for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, as well as working as a journalist, union organiser, reviewer (for The Sydney Morning Herald), a publisher's literary adviser and editor, and a member of the Commonwealth Literary Fund advisory board. She married L. C. Rodd in 1933; they had two children (a daughter, Benison, in 1946 and a son, John Laurence, in 1951). Her work was known for its well-researched, realistic, yet positive portrayals of the lives of the underprivileged in Australia. In a video interview filmed in 1986, three years before her death, for the Australia Council's Archival Film Series, Tennant told how she lived as the people she wrote about, travelling as an unemployed itinerant worker during the Depression years, living in Aboriginal communities and spending a short time in prison for research. Two of Tennant's novels, Battlers and Ride on Stranger, set in the 1930s, have been made into television mini-series. "Kylie's Hut", the author's retreat in Crowdy Bay, was destroyed during the 2019–20 Australian bushfire season.

Personal life

Tennant was raised in a devout Christian Science family and her mother was a Christian Science practitioner. She converted to Anglicanism upon her marriage, which her family supported.

Awards

Commemorations

Two streets are named for Tennant:

Novels

Short stories

For children

Plays

Biography and history

Criticism