You are invited to watch the book launch live here on YouTube at 7:30pm BST 8th September: https://youtu.be/670pI9gaN3g
It will be hosted by Paul Kerensa (co-writer of BBC hits ‘Miranda’ and ‘Not Going Out’, comedian, author of fabulous books and wonderful human being).
Exclusive content of the book launch:
• The acclaimed composer Janet Wheeler has created an incredible piece of choral music using the words of one of Jenny’s poems. This piece will be premiered at the online book launch.
• Elliott Frisby of Monkeynut Audiobooks will be in conversation with Angharad Price (the narrator of the audiobook) about why they wanted to publish this book.
• Wayne Jacobsen (Who is Wayne Jacobsen?) performs a reading of his favourite poem by Jenny
‘We Are The Winter People’ is being released as an audiobook, ebook and paperback on 8th September 2021. This book is the next big push in Jenny’s Herculean fundraising attempt for life-saving surgery in the US, which is not available to her in the UK.
About the book:
We Are the Winter People is the collected poems of Jenny Rowbory. The diverse range of poetry deals with love, loss, imagination, memory and the poet’s ever-changing relationship with faith. Despite the struggles depicted within the work, it is an ultimately empowering collection, filled with strength, determination, and hope.
We Are the Winter People contains poems to ‘come alongside you and hold your hand’ and will offer you compassion and company in your times of struggle. Beautifully written, sometimes playful, and sometimes painful, the poetry speaks to our souls as we try to navigate this life together.
Buy the Book
There are print, ebook and audiobook versions of We Are The Winter People. The paperback and ebook are available through Amazon. The audiobook is available through all the usual places where you buy audiobooks (Google Play, Audible, iTunes etc.). The audiobook and ebook will also be available to buy here on this website (more money will be raised if you buy them directly from this website as that means there won’t be distributors taking a certain percentage of the money).
About Jenny Rowbory:
Jenny Rowbory was born in 1986 in Ashford, Middlesex, and currently lives in Wales. She is a published poet (‘Rainbows in my eyes’, Longman, 2009). During her first year at university in 2004, she became ill with a virus that caused severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (inflammation of the brain and spinal cord), causing Jenny to become bed-bound and acutely ill for the last sixteen and a half years.
In May 2015, after genetic testing, Jenny was also diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. This genetic disorder causes the body to produce faulty collagen. The biggest problem for Jenny is that the faulty collagen causes the ligaments and connective tissue in her neck to be lax, which means that it can’t support the spine or skull. So the vertebrae and skull move around and subluxate (subluxation is like dislocation) and blood flow is severely reduced, causing increasing numbness.
This neck instability became life-threatening and Jenny had to have an operation in January 2020 to try to fuse her neck in place to save her life, as well as a decompression surgery for Chiari Malformation. Unfortunately the fusion surgery was not a success and Jenny became a lot more disabled and it’s too dangerous for her to move her neck or head at all.
The only neurosurgeon in the world who specialises in fusion (and fusion revision) surgeries and invasive bolt traction testing to determine the correct fusion position for highly complex Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome patients, is in the USA. Jenny is clinging to life by the skin of her teeth and has been trying to hang on for over a year while trying to fundraise enough money for the three surgeries that this neurosurgeon has said Jenny needs to have a hope of staying alive and regaining some sort of quality of life.
The money raised by the sales of We Are The Winter People will go directly towards this goal of getting Jenny to America to have the life-saving surgeries she desperately needs. If you would like to donate further, you can do so through her fundraising page, which is gofundme.com/savejenny. Jenny would very much like to stay alive and is very grateful for any donation you’re able to give.
Jenny hasn’t been able to move her head off her pillow since the unsuccessful fusion surgery. She can’t look down, up or side to side. She can’t be washed or have her pyjamas or bedding changed because if she moves her neck even a tiny bit in the wrong direction, she does massive extra damage to her neck and blood flow is reduced further. Any extra bit of damage could very easily kill her. Nurses have tried and failed to wash her or change her clothes without seriously harming her neck further. The subluxing vertebrae have moved the neck into a structure that obstructs her airway quite a lot and she is always in respiratory distress. There is nothing more any doctor in the UK can do for her. So she has been left in this condition until she can raise the money needed to be treated by the surgeon in New York.
Only a patch of ceiling directly above Jenny is within her field of vision. The only part of her body that she’s seen since the operation are her hands, which she can raise to her eyes to see but she can’t look down to see anything else. She’s rarely able to look at the screen of her phone, even though she tries to hold it up directly above her head to put it in her field of vision, because doing so damages her neck more. So she has been completely cut off from the world and from other people. Her only solace has been audiobooks. So the fact that an audiobook will be helping to raise the funds for her surgeries is particularly fitting.