Lee Cataldi was born in 1942 in Sydney, Australia. She grew up in Tasmania, went to university in Sydney, then as a post-graduate to Oxford, England. Subsequently she lived and worked in England, then returned to Australia in 1974. She taught English for six years in an inner-city high school in Sydney, then worked as a teacher-linguist and then a field linguist in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Her publications include books of poetry; Invitation to a Marxist Lesbian Party, The Women who Live on the Ground, Race Against Time and a Handbook to Sixteenth Century Rhetoric With Peggy Rockman Napaljarri Yimi-kirli she co-produced Warlpiri Narratives and Histories, and with Tjama Napanangka she published a Ngardi-English Dictionary. She now lives in the southern Mt Lofty Ranges of South Australia and breeds horses.