Fat Girl Dancing

Stella Prize-shortlisted author Kris Kneen examines their body through the lens of art and burlesque in this gorgeous, intimate story of fatness, beauty and self-knowledge.


How does a person come to know that they are different from the children around them? To measure themselves against a set normal and find themselves lacking?

When did I know that I was plump, and then fat?

Fat child, self-denying adolescent, hungry young woman; a body now burgeoning uncontrolled into middle age. Kris Kneen has borne the usual indignities- the confrontations with clothes that won't fasten, with mirrors that defame, with strangers whose gaze judges and dismisses. This is the story of how Kris learned to look unblinkingly at their recalcitrant body, and ultimately found the courage to carry it to freedom.

Fat Girl Dancing is a frank, beautiful and triumphant ode to self-respect from one of Australia's most original and acclaimed writers.

About the Author

Kris Kneen is the award-winning author of memoir-Affection and The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen-and fiction: An Uncertain Grace, Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Wintering, as well as the Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. They have written and directed broadcast documentaries for SBS and ABC Television.