Name: Jane Stemp
Location: Oxford

Hi! I was born 3 months prematurely in early 1961, and stopped breathing several times in the early days, so I'm lucky to be here at all. I have (I think ...) diplexic ataxic cerebral palsy, but fairly mildly - it affects my legs and back but not my hands or my voice. I am also hard of hearing due to encephalitis when I was 5, or else the streptomycin they gave me to cure it.

When I was born the doctors thought I'd probably not be intelligent or mobile or possibly alive five years from then, but they got it kind of wrong - my mum's a nurse and didn't believe them, so my parents took me home and gave me a "normal" childhood & schooling (apart from that I spent so much of it in hospital, chronic chest problems due to prematurity etc.) Just to show the doctors how wrong they were I took my Oxford degree in 1983 ...

I am now a children's novelist and have published 2 books with Hodder: "Waterbound" in 1995, which is a futuristic take on the position of disabled people in society, and "Secret Songs", a fantasy whose central character is hard of hearing.

I am very happy generally, even more so at the moment because I have just got engaged to be married!

Uou can mail me at jane.stemp@econlib.ox.ac.uk.