Cory Taylor wrote this remarkable book, Dying: A Memoir, in the space of a few weeks before her death from melanoma-related cancer in July 2016. In a tremendous creative surge, as her body weakened, she described the experience of knowing she would soon die.

Her powerful and beautifully written book is a clear-eyed account of the tangle of her feelings, her reflections on her life, her memories of the lives and deaths of her parents. She tells us why it was important to her to have the ability to choose the circumstances of her death. She even got as far as ordering a euthanasia drug from China. But though the knowledge that she could end it herself was important to her, she couldn’t actually do it. In the absence of a supportive legal system, she would have had to take the drug alone, and she worried about the impact on her loved ones and the people who found her. She didn’t want the word “suicide”, with its connotations of mental turmoil and despair, on her death certificate.

Cory made facing death her project; and came to find it fascinating. She hoped her final work, Dying: A Memoir, would trigger more open and honest conversations about how we die.

Dying: A Memoir is published by Text Publishing – Click to go to Text Publishing web shop