Showcasing the Works of Kath Jonathan
WRITER & EDUCATOR
I’m a writer
who spent many years teaching others to write before I chose to focus seriously on my own work. My teaching covered everything from basic literacy, which I taught in prisons and public housing, to research essays in literature and social science offered at high school and college. I loved the time spent with students. I appreciated their progress, no matter how incremental, and delighted in their creativity. As early as my late twenties, I remember thinking, If I die tomorrow, I’ll have lived a good life.
Photo by Marion Voysey
Throughout this time, I took creative writing courses at night, wrote poetry and short stories on weekends and holidays, kept journals, created long lists of story titles, jotted reviews of music, films and books, recorded dreams, heartbreaks and travel. Yet, in my mind, none of this counted as “real” writing—it wasn’t anything anyone might want to read or publish. I wrote because it felt good, felt right.
Over time, I came to see a clear connection between my desire to write and my studies and work in the field of social justice. At university, I’d studied journalism, international politics and English literature. To a great extent, my studies and subsequent teaching were concerned with issues of gender and racial justice, while in my reading, I was drawn to stories of struggles against repressive forces. No surprise there.
I was born in apartheid-era South Africa, where I lived for twelve years as an ethnically mixed person of East Indian, Black African and European descent. For my parents, living in South Africa meant they couldn’t vote, choose where to live, or leave the country freely; for me and my young siblings, it meant we weren’t allowed to go on the swings at the beach or sit on a bench at the park. More critically, it meant I couldn’t sleep at night for fear my parents might be taken by the secret police. Eventually, in 1967, my family was able to emigrate to Canada where we settled in Toronto.
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By 2012, I’d left full-time teaching and started writing daily—mostly poetry at first, then short stories and then, much to my surprise, a novel about political resistance set partly in Warsaw during World War Two, and partly in Toronto in 2010. Much later, after a certificate in creative writing and years of re-drafting, my novel, The Resistance Painter, was picked up by Simon and Schuster Canada. It’s due out March 25, 2025.
I love this writing life. I still keep journals, lists and travelogues, but now I can write about books, films and plays on social media. I’m fortunate to be part of a diverse community of writers who very generously support each other. I’m in the early stages of another novel where I’ve been exploring a new approach to prose writing that feels very organic and fluid.
Apart from my writing, I’m a member of a group of women who sponsor refugees — in my case, predominantly Afghan Hazara refugees. To date, I’ve been fortunate to help bring eleven young people to Toronto and have formed friendships with many others in this remarkable community. Once they arrive, I try my best to help with their educational goals. They’ve enlarged my already large family, and now there are many young lives I can watch blossom.
For additional information
follow @kathjonathanauthor on Instagram
There is no place more intimate than the spirit alone
May Sarton, Canticle 6
