Book Chat with Cadance Bell
5:30pm Friday 12 August
Join Cadance Bell in conversation with Kaya Wilson on Cadance's memoir The All Of It: A Bogan Memoir
ABOUT THE EVENT
Together with our friends at Meridian and A Gender Agenda, we are excited to be hosting Cadance Bell, author of The All Of It: A Bogan Rhapsody, in conversation with Kaya Wilson.
About The All of It:
What’s it like to grow up in an Aussie family that has a man of every flavour? A bank robber, an infamous sports umpire, several different breeds of drug addict (collect the whole set!), a roster of crafty swindlers, an attempted murderer and the local town drunk. And what if you had a secret so ghastly that you feared it made you more disgraceful than all of your roguish ancestors combined?
Seven years ago, Ben was a millennial with a death wish. He was loveless, overweight, crashing in his parents’ rumpus room and blinking his life away in a haze of marijuana vape. Then one day Ben decided to change everything – starting with the Ben bit. Becoming Cadance was more than a gender transition: it was a transition in every way, fear to acceptance, from self-loathing to love, anger to kindness. She was determined to experience the all of it.
Written with dazzling creativity and exuberance, The All of It is a wild coming-of-gender memoir like no other. Tender, tragic, hilarious and life-affirming, it will leave you understanding a little more about trans people, rural Australia, family, millennials and the beautiful contradictions of our kaleidoscopic world.
Cadance ‘Cady’ Bell is an Australian storyteller whose writing has appeared in publications including The Guardian and the popular queer blogs Rainbow Roo and I Miss Pockets. She has written, produced and directed dozens of award-winning short films, music videos and TV commercials. Her documentary films include The Rainbow Passage for Network 10 and Screen Australia, and Who I Am, the world’s first documentary exploring the intersection of gender diversity and neurodivergence.
She has performed at events such as Queerstories and the Antidote Festival at the Sydney Opera House. In 2020 she shared a virtual stage with Dr Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates with the Poplabs Social Impact Incubator, with her mission to ‘unmake prejudice’ by encouraging audiences to know LGTBQIA+ stories. Cady is a co-founder of Rainbow Day, which celebrates its twentieth year in 2022, having raised almost $1 million for charitable causes. And she is the founder of Threeki, which seeks to promote mindful kindness. She is currently working on a science-fiction novel: Letters to Our Robot Son. Cadance lives in New South Wales with her fiancée Amanda. She likes Pokémon Go and short walks to the fridge. She is openly transgender and freaking loves burritos.
Kaya Wilson is a writer and tsunami scientist based in Canberra. He was the winner of the 2019 Writing NSW Varuna Fellowship, a runner-up in the 2019 Kill Your Darlings New Critic Award and was shortlisted for Penguin Australia’s 2019 Write It Fellowship. As Beautiful as Any Other is his first book.
Venue
The Book Cow Bookshop
Lava Espresso Bar, Eyre Street Markets
34 Eyre Street
Kingston, ACT 2604