Post

by Arley McNeney

*Shortlisted for the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book

Nolan Taylor is a thirteen-year veteran of the Canadian women's wheelchair basketball team. Her position as "Big Girl" on the team belies her fragility when her decision to retire and undergo a long overdue hip replacement throws her into a post-retirement identity crisis. Spurred on by pain and a numbing domesticity with longtime love, Quinn McLeod, she retreats into her memory, reliving her rookie year and emerging sexuality with her much older mentor, Darren Steward.

As Nolan struggles to maintain her tenuous connections to the people around her in the midst of physical anguish, we are reminded that, despite our bodies' limitations, we have physical needs that we are driven to fulfill, and the adrenaline that pushes professional athletes can be harnessed to allow what may seem impossible.

Genres: Sports

470 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

Arley McNeney is a member of the Canadian women’s wheelchair basketball team, which won bronze at the Paralympics and gold at the 2002 and 2006 World Championships. She has been published in literary journals at the University of Toronto, and the University of Victoria and won the Mocambo Café Poetry Prize. She currently divides her time between her home in New Westminster, BC and Champaign-Urbana Illinois, where she is working on her graduate degree in Creative Writing.