Love is Love is Love

Frances is a novelist, playwright and screenwriter. She was born in England and spent her childhood pinballed across continents before settling near the beach in Sydney. A journalist by trade, she now works freelance. Her work has been published in a range of online and print outlets. Her debut novel, YA Stars Like Us, was published in 2020, and previously won the Hardie Grant Egmont Ampersand Prize in 2018 and the Varuna-Black Inc Publisher Introduction Program in 2017. 

Sophie Gonzales was born and raised in Whyalla, South Australia, where the Outback Meets the Sea, and has now moved halfway across the state to settle in Adelaide. Sophie loves punk music, frilly pink skirts, and juxtapositions. She writes young adult queer contemporary fiction with memorable characters, biting wit and endless heart. 

My essay in this anthology is titled 'Noisy Silence'. 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. Growing Up Disabled in Australia is the fifth book in the highly acclaimed, bestselling Growing Up series. It includes interviews with prominent Australians such as Senator Jordon Steele-John and Paralympian Isis Holt, poetry and graphic art, as well as more than 40 original pieces by writers with a disability or chronic illness. Contributors include Dion Beasley, Astrid Edwards, Jessica Walton, Carly-Jay Metcalfe, Gayle Kennedy and El Gibbs. 

Rhiannon Wilde is a writer and former Brisbane high school teacher. Her debut novel, Henry Hamlet’s Heart, won the Queensland Literary Awards Glendower Award for an Emerging Queensland Writer, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards – Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature, longlisted for an Indie Book Award and was a CBCA Notable Book. She can usually be found drinking coffee dressed like a slightly subdued Elton John, and lives with her partner on a hill near the sea.