Catherine Julia Mackay (née Bilston; 12 November 1864 – 28 March 1944), known by her pen name Katrine, was an Australian-born New Zealand journalist, novelist and cook.

Her parents were Ellen Augustine McElligott and her husband, George Yarra Bilston, an innkeeper and grazier, and she was the fifth of their nine children.

[2] Mackay began writing as a teenager and by age 17 had published a serial novel, Eve's Sacrifice, in The Australian Journal.

[2] On 16 September 1890 she married John William Mackay, a New Zealander, and their daughter Mona Innis (later a children's novelist) was born in Adelaide in 1892.

When her estranged husband died in 1919 she left Auckland and moved to Canterbury where her daughter was now living, where she worked as a cook for many years on several sheep stations.

[2] In the mid-1930s she spoke on several radio broadcasts about her experiences in journalism, including the heavy workload and the particular difficulties of being a female journalist, such as harassment on late night assignments by police and members of the public.