Looking for fantasy and science fiction stories that SAY something? With deep and immersive world-building? No spice? Where romance is central to the plot, but not THE plot?

Cathryn deVries is a multi-award-winning author who writes clean romantic fantasy and science fiction stories filled with hope, mystery, dystopian tension, and emotional adventure for readers who love immersive and imaginative worlds without explicit content.

In addition, she explores themes of restorative justice, empowerment, connection with earth and spirit, and finding the true self. She is the author of Son of Osivirius, a standalone science fantasy novella, and a romantic fantasy trilogy co-authored with her neurodiverse daughter to be published in 2027.

Bathed in literature from her earliest days, Cathryn memorised Cinderella at age three and began writing and illustrating her own stories as soon as she could hold a pencil. She continued writing all through high-school, though she pursued a maths-science stream in senior and won the 1995 Australian Student’s Prize for Excellence. She then graduated from a Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering with first class honours and writing was shelved for a decade. 

Preferring to work on only one project at a time, she retired from the Air Force upon becoming a mother, and has spent the last decade and a half homeschooling her four children, two of whom are on the autism spectrum. This forced her to recover from perfectionism, but also ultimately led to her picking up the pen once more. She and her family live in the Gold Coast Hinterland of Australia, where she enjoys living in the rainforest and pretending she’s an elf.

Cathryn’s accolades include the 2023 Stuart and Hadow short story prize, the Literary Titan Gold Book Award, the Firebird Book Award, the Reader’s Choice Book Award, the Pencraft Award, the American Writing Award, and the Chanticleer International Book Award. Her short stories appear in the My Story, My Voice anthology and the Ritardando anthology. Primarily self-taught, she credits mentorship with a Story Grid certified editor for her success.

Join the Slow Readers Society now and get Lightning Hunter, a non-spoiler 'epilogue' for her upcoming fantasy trilogy, and her award-winning story When A Slave Falls, for FREE.

Cathryn's stance on generative AI

The Mission of Eclecta Perennial

INFLUENCES

Cathryn writes hopeful speculative fiction with deeper themes, and all of these things have shaped her and Emalyn, influencing their writing in one way or another.

•  favourite books
•  favourite movies and TV series
•  interesting facts that didn't make the bio
•  what you will and won't see in their books
•  what they've got in the pipeline
•  learn more about The Slow Reader's Society of Eclecta Perennial, their newsletter!

Accessibility

Cathryn and Emalyn take accessibility seriously and are working toward WCAG 2.2 AA compliance. Accessibility is an ongoing effort, please use our website contact form if you run into an issue.

Alt text on images. Currently, we are unable to manually add ALT text on images. We have contacted our website host about this issue. Images are captioned where possible, but this is something we'll address as soon as our website provider adjusts the backend.