(1956 on) – Writer and Founder of Disabled-Led Arts Organisation

Gaele was born in Yallourn, Victoria, Australia. She lived in Botswana as a citizen for a large part of her life, majoring in English and History at the University of Botswana before teaching in the English Department there. She studied in France and England, completing a PhD on South African women writers at the University of Hull. She currently lives in Sydney, Australia and is the founding director of Outlandish Arts, a disabled-led arts organisation. Gaele worked closely with Wally Carr to render a vivid account of his life in the literary biography My Longest Round: the life story of Wally Carr, about the Australian First Nations ex-champion boxer who held twelve titles in six divisions. She is also editor of Young Days: Bankstown Aboriginal Elders Oral History Project (2013). Her collection of short stories, Colour Me Blue, is published by Heinemann’s African Writers Series. Her short stories and poems appear in various literary magazines and anthologies, such as Botswana Women Write and Not Quite Right For Us. Her children’s fiction includes Thara Meets the Cassipoohka Man, which addresses global warming. It received the Zimbabwe Award for Children’s Literature. Most recently, Gaele’s animated poems have won numerous international awards.

A friend since the 1990s, Gaele’s commitment to the arts and equal rights is unwavering, and muscular dystrophy has proved no barrier to her continuing to create wonderful literature and more.

Sharmilla Beezmohun

Read more: https://www.gaelesobott.com/