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A forthright, honest and rousingly triumphant memoir from a woman who has to live with a highly visible different appearancedue to a rare skin condition. Say hello to Carly. 'In fairytales,the characters who look different are often castas the villain or monsters. It's only when they shed their unconventional skinthat they are seen as "good" or less frightening. There are very fewstories where the character that looks different is the hero of the story ... I've been the hero of mystory - telling it on my own terms, proud about my facial difference anddisability, not wanting a cure for my rare, severe and sometimes confrontingskin condition, and knowing that I am beautiful even though I don't...
A rich collection of writing from those negotiating disability in their lives - a group whose voices are not heard often enough My body and its place in the world seemed normal to me. Why wouldn’t it? I didn’t grow up disabled; I grew up with a problem. A problem that those around me wanted to fix. We have all felt that uncanny sensation that someone is watching us. The diagnosis helped but it didn’t fix everything. Don’t fear the labels. That identity, which I feared for so long, is now one of my greatest qualities. I had become disabled – not just by my disease, but by the way the world treated me. When I found that out, everything changed. One in five Australians has a disabilit...
From the disability rights advocate and creator of the #DisabledAndCute viral campaign, a thoughtful, inspiring, and charming collection of essays exploring what it means to be black and disabled in a mostly able-bodied white America. Keah Brown loves herself, but that hadn’t always been the case. Born with cerebral palsy, her greatest desire used to be normalcy and refuge from the steady stream of self-hate society strengthened inside her. But after years of introspection and reaching out to others in her community, she has reclaimed herself and changed her perspective. In The Pretty One, Brown gives a contemporary and relatable voice to the disabled—so often portrayed as mute, weak, or...
'A gorgeous book ... it's timeless and beautiful and it deserves to be read by people of all ages.' MELINA MARCHETTA Shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards 2021 A CBCA Notable Book for Younger Readers 2021 Shortlisted for the Readings Children's Book Prize 2021 Longlisted for the ABIA Book of the Year Award for Young Children 2021 Longlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2021 One extraordinary year will change them all... Sorrento, Victoria, 1999. Fred's family is a mess. Her mother died when she was six and she's been raised by her Pop and adoptive father, Luca, ever since. But now Pop's had to go away, and Luca's girlfriend Anika and her son have moved in. More and more it feels ...
Caro Llewellyn?s family was unconventional from the beginning. Her parents met in hospital, where her father, confined to an iron lung after contracting polio, seduced his nurse and married her. Growing up, Caro watched her father embrace life, undaunted and ingenious in the face of his severe paralysis. From him, she learned courage; from her writer mother independence. She fell in love with literature and writers; when she was asked by Salman Rushdie to direct a festival in New York, she felt she?d been offered the life of her dreams. Until one day, jogging through Central Park, she lost all feeling in her legs. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Caro?s world shattered. She knew all too well what life in a wheelchair meant, and, faced with her own mortality, that she must look back at her father?s exemplary fortitude and grace to find a way forward. An at times emotionally brutal memoir of family, vulnerability and purpose, Diving into Glass is a smart, often funny portrait of the realities of disability and an intimate account of three lives filled with astounding vigour and audacity.
With his signature wit, twenty-something author, blogger, and entrepreneur Shane Burcaw is back with an essay collection about living a full life in a body that many people perceive as a tragedy. From anecdotes about first introductions where people patted him on the head instead of shaking his hand, to stories of passersby mistaking his able-bodied girlfriend for a nurse, Shane tackles awkward situations and assumptions with humor and grace. On the surface, these essays are about day-to-day life as a wheelchair user with a degenerative disease, but they are actually about family, love, and coming of age. Shane Burcaw is one half of the hillarious YouTube duo, Squirmy and Grubs, which he runs with his girlfriend, now fiancee, Hannah Aylward.
'A charming page-turner of a romance' Laura Jane Williams, bestselling author of Our Stop 'A heart-warming tale . . . sure to tug at your heart-strings' Woman's Own _________________ Alice and Alife couldn't be more different. He's charming, talkative and outgoing. She's reserved, efficient and a workaholic. Forced together by circumstance, they can't see each other but they can talk - and as Alfie slowly brings Alice out of her shell, they start to get to know each other better. The connection between them feels real, but can you really fall for someone you've never seen? ___ Readers are falling in love with Before I Saw You: ***** 'One of the must-reads of 2021! It is beautifully written with characters that have such great depth.' ***** 'An absolute joy and a love story about falling in love and allowing yourself to be loved.' ***** 'A funny, heart-wrenching and beautiful love story. Absolutely loved it.'
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children meets Lord of the Flies in the exciting debut from Angharad Walker. A new boy arrives at the Ash House. He can't remember his name - or why he's been sent there. Given the name Sol, and troubled by a mystery pain that no medicine can cure, he joins the gang of children living in the shadows of the secretive house. Soon, however, there's more for him to face: the darkness that descends with the arrival of the Doctor ...
'The tall trees nearby called them up and red-tailed black cockatoos carried messages to them that they told no one else about.' Pushing Back is John Kinsella's most haunting and timely fiction to date. It is populated with eccentric, compelling characters, drifters, unlikely friendships, the silences of dissolving relationships, haunted dwellings and lonely highways, the ghosts of cleared bushland and the threats of right-wing nationalists and senseless destruction. A couple make love in an abandoned asbestos house, a desperate carpet cleaner beholden to the gig economy begs a financially distressed client not to cancel his booking, an addict cannot bear to see his partner without the watch...
ARIA Award-winning singer and actress Clare Bowditch confronts her inner critic in this no-holds-barred memoir. This is the story I promised myself, aged twenty-one, that I would one day be brave enough - and well enough - to write. Clare Bowditch has always had a knack for telling stories. Through her music and performing, this beloved Australian artist has touched hundreds of thousands of lives. But what of the stories she used to tell herself? That 'real life' only begins once you're thin or beautiful, that good things only happen to other people. YOUR OWN KIND OF GIRL reveals a childhood punctuated by grief, anxiety and compulsion, and tells how these forces shaped Clare's life for bette...