Kate Taylor was born in France and raised in Ottawa, and now makes Toronto her home. As a teenager, she knew that she would be a writer, though she pursued not fiction but journalism, a passion she discovered in high school. While attending Glebe Collegiate in Ottawa, Taylor wrote for her school’s newspaper, and she continued this work while attending university -- first writing for the University of Toronto’s student papers, then achieving her Masters degree in journalism at the University of Western Ontario -- and later at such publications as The London Free Press and The Hamilton Spectator. In 1989 Taylor was hired by The Globe and Mail, and from 1995 to 2003 she served as the paper’s theatre critic, winning two Nathan Cohen Awards for her reviews. In September 2003 she took on a new assignment, writing a twice-weekly column about cultural issues for the paper’s arts section. She has also contributed to Canadian Art, Applied Arts, and CBC Radio’s The Arts Today, and is the author of Painters (1989), a biography of Canadian artists written for children.