Rabble invites you to join Carly Findlay OAM as she talks to Marla Bishop, Patrick Gunasekera and Sandi Parsons, about their contributions to the book Growing Up Disabled in Australia.

This event will take place on Zoom. It will be Auslan interpreted and auto-captioned. Please contact rabble@rabblebooksandgames.com.au should you have any other access requirements.

Please register via Eventbrite. You will be sent a link to the Zoom event at 4pm AWST on the day of the event. Check your spam folder if you have not received it by then - send us a message at Rabble and we can provide you with the meeting information directly.

The event is free, but we encourage you to buy the book from your local bookshop. Buying from us helps to pay for holding these events: https://www.rabblebooksandgames.com.au/p/biography-growing-up-disabled-in-australia?barcode=9781760641436

[Banner image description: a copy of the book Growing Up Disabled in Australia on the far left. The book cover art is a dark green background with scribbly pink, yellow and white marks on it. The title is in white across most of the book, "Growing Up Disabled in Australia" with a handwritten allcaps font. Along the bottom in typed san-serif yellow font, "edited by Carly Findlay". The event details are on the right, under the title "Growing Up Disabled in Australia Free ZOOM book event". Under that title it splits into two columns of text. The left column: "Carly Findlay OAM in conversation with local contributors Marla Bishop, Patrick Gunasekera, Sandi Parsons" and the right column: 6pm AWST / 9pm AEDT Thursday 4 March. Registration essential. Auslan Interpreted. Auto-Captioned. The banner background is a pale green with small blue, lime green and pale pink dots and white crescents scattered around it.]

About the Book

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 disability. And disability presents itself in many ways. Yet disabled people are still underrepresented in the media and in literature. In Growing Up Disabled in Australia – compiled by writer and appearance activist Carly Findlay OAM – more than forty writers with a disability or chronic illness share their stories, in their own words. The result is illuminating.

Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the fifth book in the highly acclaimed, bestselling Growing Up series.

About the contributors

Carly Findlay OAM is a writer, speaker and appearance activist. She is the author of memoir Say Hello and the editor of Growing Up Disabled in Australia. She has been published in the ABC, The Guardian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, CNN and Vogue.

Marla Bishop is a poet and LGBTQIA+ portrait photographer from Perth. They were officially diagnosed in 2017 with fibromyalgia, a chronic pain condition that causes muscle aches and stiffness, brain fog and chronic fatigue. Marla's artistic emphasis is based on empowerment, and giving a voice to those in marginalised communities.

Patrick Gunasekera is a queercrip Sinhala interdisciplinary artist who lives, works and plays on the Whadjuk region of the Noongar nation, disrupting white and settler epistemologies of art through writing, photography, visual arts, live art, theatre, and advocacy. He has been published in Voiceworks, Australian Poetry Journal, Seesaw, Pelican and the Centre For Stories's anthology Wave After Wave.

Sandi Parsons lives and breathes stories and has written several books for young readers. She is passionate about diversity in story-telling. She considers the guardianship of her gifted lungs one of her many victories in her ongoing battle with cystic fibrosis.