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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'A moving and heartfelt meditation on life and death, from a celebrated Australian author.
'Cory Taylor's debut novel, Me and Mr Booker, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and her second, My Beautiful Enemy, was shortlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Award. Her latest and final work is in response to her being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
'Controversy and debate surrounding assisted dying continues to escalate, and at the most difficult time in her life Cory has chosen to her add her voice.
'Dying: A Memoir, while beautifully written, doesn't pull any punches when it comes to examining our personal rights in death. Cory begins the book by explaining that she has bought life-ending drugs online from China—she doesn't blanch from the issues around assisted dying.
'Cory's extraordinary and provocative book details her intense love for her family, her joys and regrets, her rage at a life cut short and her personal views on how to have a 'good death'.
'Throughout the book, Cory's wit, compassion and sparkling intelligence shine through, making this one of the great reading experiences of the year.' (Publication summary)
Adaptations
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Dying : A Memoir
2025
single work
drama
'Every story deserves a good ending. What’s yours?
'When the acclaimed author Cory Taylor was diagnosed with a terminal illness, what followed was an astonishing creative surge that resulted in a memoir Barack Obama named as one of his favourite books of 2017.
'Taylor’s wry insights into the rituals, language and taboos surrounding mortality can be witty, provocative or eye-opening – sometimes in the same breath. With honesty and unsentimental clarity she confronts the swamp of anxiety and despair that traditionally surrounds death and opens the door to the bright clear-eyed vision it ultimately grants us. Learning to face death is, in the end, learning to live fully.'
Source: Melbourne Theatre Company.
Notes
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Dedication: To Shin
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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A Tribute to Cory Taylor and Dying : A Memoir
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Stella Interviews 2018;'Cory Taylor’s Dying: A Memoir is shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize. It was written in the space of a few weeks before Cory’s death from cancer in July 2016. To honour her shortlisting and celebrate the book, Cory’s friend Kristina Olsson shares this reflection.' (Introduction)
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Illuminations in the Face Of Terminal Illness
2017
single work
review
— Appears in: The New York Times , 27 July 2017; (p. 1)
— Review of Dying : A Memoir 2016 single work autobiography -
What I’m Reading
2017
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2017; -
Unflinching, Luminous, and Moving, the Stella Shortlist Will Get under Your Skin
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 18 April 2017;'There are certain books that have the knack of getting under your skin. This is why George Bernard Shaw declared Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit to be a far more “seditious” text than Karl Marx’s Das Capital.
'What he was getting at is the power of books to work on your emotions. The intellect can be too cold an instrument to engender empathy, to bring people who are distant from you into your “circle of concern”. And it is precisely this, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, that matters for the pursuit of social justice.
'In 2017, the Stella Prize judges have again come up with a shortlist of books that will engage your brain, but also your heart. They illuminate all the aspects of life that make us frail and vulnerable – sickness, dying, inequality – realities that many of us would prefer to ignore.' (Introduction)
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Review : Dying : A Memoir
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Good Reading , June 2016; (p. 55)
— Review of Dying : A Memoir 2016 single work autobiography
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Bittersweet Ending
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 21 May 2016; (p. 34)
— Review of Dying : A Memoir 2016 single work autobiography 'Cory Taylor talks candidly about a subject that matters in her new work, Dying: A Memoir It was not until Brisbane author Cory Taylor received a diagnosis of terminal cancer that she found the impetus to fulfil her long-held writing dream. ...' -
Ars Moriendi
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June-July no. 382 2016; (p. 41)
— Review of Dying : A Memoir 2016 single work autobiography -
Leaving This World
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 11-12 June 2016; (p. 16)
— Review of Dying : A Memoir 2016 single work autobiography -
Driven to Write into the Dying of the Light
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 11-12 June 2016; (p. 26) The Saturday Age , 11-12 June 2016; (p. 26)
— Review of Dying : A Memoir 2016 single work autobiography -
Dying & In Gratitude Review: Two Writers Come to Terms with Their Looming Deaths
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Brisbane Times , 10 June 2016;
— Review of Dying : A Memoir 2016 single work autobiography 'When Cory Taylor's melanoma proves unstoppable, she finds that even then dying is little spoken of – as if "death represents some form of failure", an aversion that would seem to have us banish "the stark facts of mortality" from consciousness. In our medicalised world, we have lost, she says, "the common rituals and common language for dying". That is why she's written Dying: A Memoir – not as a cancer diary, but as a provocation into that taboo. ...' -
A Pair of Ragged Claws
2016
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 28-29 May 2016; (p. 19) -
Making Stories of Our Own Ends : Two Australian Memoirs of Dying
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 35 2016; 'An increasing number of end-of-life memoirs have been published over the past two decades. A number of these by American and British authors have received considerable notice and acclaim. There are, however, also a number of book-length published memoirs written by Australian narrators whose texts narrate their own dying. Despite achieving a measure of popularity with readers, few of these Australian works have been explored in detail or categorised as a discrete sub-set of the autobiographical memoir in Australia. This article discusses two Australian memoirs, Dying: A Memoir by Donald Horne and Myfanwy Horne (2007) and Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor (2016). Examining these texts contributes to understanding of both this revealing autobiographical practice and practices of writing and publishing popular memoir in Australia more generally. They also add to knowledge of the way individuals face, and deal with, the prospect of their own impending ends.' (Publication abstract) -
Unflinching, Luminous, and Moving, the Stella Shortlist Will Get under Your Skin
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 18 April 2017;'There are certain books that have the knack of getting under your skin. This is why George Bernard Shaw declared Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit to be a far more “seditious” text than Karl Marx’s Das Capital.
'What he was getting at is the power of books to work on your emotions. The intellect can be too cold an instrument to engender empathy, to bring people who are distant from you into your “circle of concern”. And it is precisely this, as philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues, that matters for the pursuit of social justice.
'In 2017, the Stella Prize judges have again come up with a shortlist of books that will engage your brain, but also your heart. They illuminate all the aspects of life that make us frail and vulnerable – sickness, dying, inequality – realities that many of us would prefer to ignore.' (Introduction)
-
A Tribute to Cory Taylor and Dying : A Memoir
2018
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Stella Interviews 2018;'Cory Taylor’s Dying: A Memoir is shortlisted for the 2017 Stella Prize. It was written in the space of a few weeks before Cory’s death from cancer in July 2016. To honour her shortlisting and celebrate the book, Cory’s friend Kristina Olsson shares this reflection.' (Introduction)
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What I’m Reading
2017
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2017;
Awards
- 2017 longlisted Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian General Non-Fiction Book of the Year
- 2017 shortlisted The Stella Prize
- 2016 shortlisted Queensland Literary Awards — The Courier-Mail People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year