Please join us for an informative and timely chat with author Anne Gately in conversation with author advocate and all round lovely person Anna Featherstone at our Port Macquarie Library on Wednesday 4th December at 5.30pm.
Anne Gately is passionate about reducing the incidence of skin cancer in Australia, particularly by influencing a change to Australia’s bronzed culture by leveraging the power of the media and sporting industries. As a Stage IV melanoma survivor, given a prognosis of 12 to 24 months, she has real-life experience of the devastating effects that sun exposure can have. Fortunately, she had a complete response to immunotherapy treatment and just 97 days after diagnosis had no active cancer.
Anne has had a career of over 30 years as a senior marketing leader, working for some of Australia’s largest corporates and international advertising agencies delivering advertising solutions for brands including NRMA Insurance, American Express, Optus and Weight Watchers. To help change the narrative, Anne speaks to advertising agencies and marketers about how they can make a difference. She is an active advocate, meeting with politicians, speaking at medical conferences and is a member of the Melanoma Patients Australia Consumer Advisory Group.Anne has appeared on all major Australian television networks, discussing a variety of topics to do with sun protection and skin cancer and will appear in the documentary film Conquering Skin Cancer in 2024.
Now living back in Coogee, where she grew up, Anne is walking distance from the beach once again. She is a mad keen ocean swimmer and loves nothing better than to start the day swimming around Wedding Cake Island at Coogee Beach. Anne hopes to inspire Australians to bring about a change in the Australian culture which is currently priming us for skin cancer. A solution for skin cancer lies with all of us, it is a WE problem, not just a ME problem.
SUNBURNT
Australians love the sun – our outdoor lifestyle is part our trademark appeal. It’s also the reason that every thirty minutes someone is diagnosed with melanoma. Why skin cancer is called Australia’s National Cancer, and two out of three Australians are likely to be diagnosed with it before turning 70.
Sunburnt is a book about courage, strength and resilience and will make you reflect not only on your own sun exposure but that of all Australians. After living an average Aussie life playing sport, spending languid days on the beach, and falling in love with ocean swimming, Anne Gately received unwelcome news. She had Stage IV melanoma.
Yet Anne is one of the lucky ones. After a dire prognosis, she dug deep to face the clear and present prospect of death, head-on. In Sunburnt, her revealing memoir, Anne recounts the emotions and challenges of her life-saving immunotherapy treatment under the care of Professor Georgina Long (2024 Australian of the Year), to come through the other side. When she witnessed younger family members sunbaking and even sunburnt, she was shocked and spurred into action. What is it about our culture that compels us to worship the sun, despite knowing the risks?
Through colourful reflections of her childhood, redolent with long days in the great outdoors, Anne pinpoints a way of life that underscored her own sun exposure. Backed up by published research and clear-sighted sociocultural observation, Sunburnt identifies how these cultural norms are unique to Australia and offers practical solutions for change.
