Raging Grace: Australian Writers Speak Out on Disability

by Andy Jackson (Editor), Esther Ottaway (editor), Kerri Shying (editor)

126 pages, Paperback

Published August 12, 2024

About the author

Andy Jackson has had poems published in a variety of print and on-line journals, been awarded grants from the Australia Council and Arts Victoria, been the recipient of an Australian Society of Authors mentorship. His most recent collection of poems, Among the Regulars,was published by papertiger media in 2010 – this book was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry (the Kenneth Slessor Prize) and Highly Commended in the Anne Elder Award.

He has performed at dozens of literary events and festivals - including The Age Melbourne Writers Festival, Prakriti Poetry Festival [in Chennai, India], Goa Literary & Arts Festival, Australian Poetry Festival, Queensland Poetry Festival, Newcastle Young Writers Festival and Overload Poetry Festival.

Jackson has been awarded residencies from Victorian Writers Centre, Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre (Perth) and Asialink. He is also an infrequent collaborator with musicians, sound artists and other writers.

A collaborative puppetry-poetry performance with Rachael Wenona Guy entitled Ambiguous Mirrors won the City of Yarra Award for Most Innovative Work at the Overload Poetry Festival in 2009. He won the 2008 Arts ACT Rosemary Dobson Award for Best Unpublished Poem for Secessionist.

He has the genetic condition Marfan Syndrome, and is currently based in Melbourne.

Reviews

[James Whitmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection from 23 writers with disabilities and neurodivergence grew out of an RMIT Writing the Future of Health Fellowship. Many address the future of health directly and are accounts of the writers’ experiences with the medical system. “You survive this medical system by pretending, going along,” write Jasper Peach and Rachel Wenona Guy in Selections of Memory from Double Pneumonia / Selections of Memory from the Psych Ward, “You crawl deep inside some cavern of yourself and wait it out like a wounded animal”. Read more on my blog.