BOOKS
- True North: A Memoir
True North: A Memoir
A bombshell of honesty and hope. This book has the power to heal hearts.’–Clare Bowditch
‘Catherine Deveny is a blazing light in a world that is often grim. She brings her immense generosity of spirit to this beautiful memoir, and we are blessed to have her.’–Clementine Ford
An uplifting, heartfelt memoir about surviving life’s upheavals – and how to live authentically
Breaking up isn’t a conscious decision, it’s more of a revelation … In the first few moments after waking each day I needed to remind myself who I was and what had happened. It was like pulling a compass out of a drawer and watching it adjust, the needle swinging around to find true north and quivering before staying there.When writer Catherine Deveny faced the end of a seventeen-year relationship with the father of her children, she had no idea what lay on the other side of the months of tumult: she just knew she had to create space for a new life.
But this wasn’t the first time she’d taken a plunge into the unknown or let go of conventional assumptions. In this heartfelt and moving memoir, Deveny shares how she learnt to live life on her own terms. From her oppressive Catholic upbringing in Melbourne’s working-class inner-north, through growing independence in her teenage years and university sharehouses to life in Melbourne’s thriving cultural scene, Deveny’s life is at once highly relatable and utterly unique.
True North is a cathartic and uplifting read that will resonate with anyone who has gone through – or is currently living through – a major life change.
‘Catherine Deveny has magic in her, and so does every page of this book. There are no words left to explain how I feel about the extreme truths and candid self-knowledge shared in these pages, because Deveny has used them all. Breathtaking.’
Chrissie Swan - Mental!
Mental: Everything You Never Knew You Needed to Know about Mental Health
Psychiatrist Dr Steve Ellen and comedian Catherine Deveny combine forces to demystify
the world of mental health. Providing an insider perspective, they share their personal experiences of mental illness and unpack the current knowledge about conditions and treatments. What do we know? What don’t we know? How do we get help? What actually works?Punctuated with anecdotes, real-life stories and reflections on the cultural and historical context, Mental is an irreverent and entertaining guide to the full spectrum of mental health issues – from depression and anxiety to schizophrenia, personality disorders and substance abuse.
Set to become a go-to guide for anyone with a mental illness or supporting someone who has one, Mental breaks the taboos around mental health and offers clear practical advice on how to live successfully.
- Use Your Words!
A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach To Writing.
Want to write? Got a memoir, novel, screenplay or blog in your back drawer? Need to get ‘unstuck’? This is the magic pill you’ve been looking for.
Read some lovely things about the book here, here, here and here, a fab piece about the launch and check out the launch photos and audio of the fabulous speeches.
In Use Your Words writer and comedian Catherine Deveny reveals the secrets that have made her ‘Gunnas’ Writing Masterclasses sell-out successes around the country. With humour and passion, she explains the struggles all writers face and reveals how to overcome them.
Whether you’re already published or just starting out, writing for others or purely for self-expression, Use Your Words has the tips, tricks, techniques and honest truths to get you writing. You’ll learn how creativity is like a vending machine, how writing is like a magnet and how not to die with your light inside you.
You should come to a Gunnas Writing Masterclass, check out my 100 Writing Prompt Cards here.
Wait no longer – smash through procrastination and fear and get those words on the page.
You can…
1. Buy here
2. Message me here and I will send, sign and stamp for $40
3. Kindle here
Praise for Use Your Words:
‘Everyone has a book in them. Before you write yours, however, read this. It’s brilliant. The world will thank you.’ —Clare Bowditch
‘Finally the truth about writing! Buy this book if you want to get the job done.’ —Chrissie Swan
‘An insightful, funny, honest how-to, go-do, firecracker-up-you bible for the emerging and established author alike. Buy it, read it, and WRITE.’ —Maxine Beneba Clarke
‘Catherine Deveny’s no-nonsense attitude and comedic genius make learning fun. If you’ve always wanted to write but never thought you could, banish those thoughts right now.’ —Clementine Ford
‘As practical and profane as the woman who wrote it.’ —Benjamin Law
‘The most readable book on writing ever written.’ —Dee Madigan
- The Happiness Show
She ached for him. She longed for him. She missed the way he made her feel and how funny and smart and sexy she felt with him. And young. She missed the version of herself that she had left behind.
At thirty-eight, Lizzie Quealy thinks she has things sorted: a happy relationship, a couple of gorgeous kids, a steadfast best friend and a career she loves. But when Lizzie bumps into Tom, an old flame from her globe-trotting twenties, her life begins to unravel.
Tom is her ‘unfinished business’: the man she might have spent her life with, if things had gone a little differently. Ten years on, the spark is still there – but how far is Lizzie prepared to go to recapture it, and at what cost?
Set in Melbourne, London and Bali, via Tokyo and the Trans-Siberian Express, The Happiness Show is a refreshingly honest story about love, fidelity and the messiness of second chances. Sexy and hilarious, it explores the rules and taboos of contemporary relationships – and what happens when they stand in the way of one woman’s pursuit of happiness.
- Free to A Good Home
Chadstone, God, Two And A Half Men, Swine Flu…Deveny basically tears them all a new one. It’s been a bad year for pigs and pigs in suits. The only thing for it is a good dose of Catherine Deveny, who each week in the Age puts everything into perspective with her trademark iconoclastic wit.
Free to a Good Home includes her thoughts on gifted children and breakfast television, sexy billboards and the bill of rights. She reflects on her youngest child’s first day at school, and on how to be happy in hard times.
Fearlessly funny and always provocative, Deveny is the perfect antidote to the modern world’s ills.
Can anyone explain why I did this? I went to the chemist and bought this crap I put on my face to make me look younger. I put the jar on the counter. The chemist girl said, ‘Is this stuff any good?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘I’m sixty.’ Eyes like saucers, mouth agape, she gasped, ‘OH MY GOD! Sixty! Toula! Fatima! Kelly! Come and check out this old lady. She’s sixty!’ So the other chemist girls scurried over and after a bit of oohing and aahing one said, ‘Oh my God! Sixty? You look like you’re forty-five!’
I’m forty. Chemist girls, one. Smart-arse, zero.
Available on iTunes or BUY HERE
- Say When
In 2008 the Pope came to Sydney, petrol prices soared and Australia proudly became the fattest nation on earth. Big Brother got the chop, Sam Newman mauled a mannequin and the Logies were as wonderfully bad as ever. Thank goodness for Catherine Deveny. Always ready with a subversive aside or a provocative question, each week in the Age she brings her passionate, irreverent wit to bear on the big issues of the day.
Say When collects Deveny’s funniest, sharpest and most outrageous columns from the past year – and some unpublished work, as well. Whether taking on God, climate change or Kerri-Anne Kennerley, she is sure to leave you begging for more.
“We’ve won the battle of the fatties. Australia is now officially, according to some bunch of folk with clipboards in one hand and flab pinchers in the other, the world’s fattest nation. Go, you good thing! Get stuck into those pies! Potato cakes? I’ll have three. One for mum, one for dad and one for the country. Let’s use our newfound status as the Tubby Country as a tourist pitch to attract chubby chasers and fat fetishists. Where the bloody hell am I? Down the shops, buying dim sims.”
- It’s Not My Fault They Print Them
Each week in the pages of the Age, Catherine Deveny tackled the big issues of modern life with hilarity and passion and in her own inimitable style. From 4WD owners to Nick Giannopolous to women who take their husband’s name, Deveny isn’t backward in coming forward. It’s Not My Fault They Print Them collects Deveny’s funniest, most biting work, published and unpublishable (till now). Bound to spark heated debate and riotous laughter, it includes her views on elective caesareans, private education, McLeod’s Daughters, Sam Newman and much, much more. Prepare to be tickled, cajoled, outraged, baited and amused.
Available on iTunes or BUY HERE
- Destroying The Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World
Featuring Destroying the Joint in Twelve Easy Lessons by Catherine Deveny
A fabulously provocative collection by women ready to destroy the joint.
In 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said a society needs the political participation of women to reach its full potential. Commentator Allan Jones reacted to his by saying: ‘Women are destroying the joint . . . Honestly.’
People around the country responded with passion, disbelief and hilarity. In Destroying the Joint: Why Women Have to Change the World, Australian women reply to Jones’s comment and the broader issues of sexism and misogyny in our culture.
Edited by Jane Caro, this entertaining and thought-provoking collection includes essays, analysis, memoir, fiction, satire, polemic and tweets from some of our best and brightest.
Available as paperback, kindle e-book and iTunes e-book.
- Stamping Ground: Stories of the Northern Suburbs of Melbourne
Foreword by Catherine DevenyGrowing up Greek in Thornbury; erasing the memory of an ex-boyfriend in Westgarth; fear of kites at Edwardes Lake Park; a young girl escaping from Lalor in the 80s makes a surprise discovery in Reservoir.
With new work by emerging and established writers, Stamping Ground will take you on surprising journeys through the familiar and unfamiliar world of Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
‘I grew up in Reservoir. If you are not familiar with Reservoir it’s not a place where people live it’s a place where people’s cousins who just got out of jail live. And it’s the only place in the world apart from Russia where people get married in track suits, and they have bouncers in the supermarket. I’m thinking of doing a one woman show about my teenage years and calling it Reservoir Dog …’
Buy paperback, eBook or iTunes.
- Mothermorphosis: Australian storytellers write about becoming a mother
Featuring The Narcissism of Motherhood by Catherine Deveny
Good Mother. Bad Mother. Proud Mother. Guilty Mother.
Modern motherhood is riddled with contradictions and myths.In Mothermorphosis, some of Australia’s most talented writers and storytellers share their own experiences of motherhood. In telling their stories they articulate the complex internal conflicts, the exhilaration and the absurdity of the transformation that takes place when we become mothers.
We read about the yearning for a child, the private and public expressions of maternal love, the questioning, uncertainty and unexpected delight, as well as unfathomable loss.
Mothermorphosis reveals that there is no ‘right’ version of this epic experience and no single tale that could ever speak for all mothers. Yet it is in reading about other women’s experiences—the hard bits, the joyous bits and even the ridiculous bits—that we can become more compassionate, not just to other mothers but hopefully to ourselves.Paperback, eBook and iTunes.
