Embracing Ugly in a Beauty Obsessed World
Robert Hoge has worked as a journalist, a speechwriter, a science communicator for the CSIRO and a political advisor to the former Queensland Premier and Deputy Premier. He has had numerous short stories, articles, interviews and other works published in Australia and overseas and was featured on Australian Story in September 2013. He also enjoys photography, and is interested in disability advocacy and social engagement. While he never went far with his professional lawn bowls career, Robert did carry the Olympic torch in 2000.
His memoir, Ugly, is about growing up ugly and disabled. It’s also about bad haircuts and reading and awful teen love poems and underarm bowling as a metaphor for… well, you’ll just have to read the book.
He is married and lives in Brisbane. He has an eleven-year-old daughter who thinks his Olympic torch would make a really great cricket bat.
A Champion of Change on the World Stage
Judy Huett Is a 40 year old woman with an intellectual disability from Burnie ,Tasmania, where she lives with her husband Peter.
In 2010Judy was awarded the Tasmanian Disability community Achievement Award which was followed, in 2012, by the Individual Award for Human Rights for her long-standing commitment to promoting the human rights of people with intellectual disability and her contribution at a local, national and international level to developing Self Advocacy.
In 2013 Judy travelled to Geneva, Switzerland as part of the expert group to talk to and present to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD)
In 2014, Judy was a finalist for Australia day Local hero.
Judy is currently working as the Self Advocacy Liaison for Speak Out Association of Tasmania