Support the publishing of Tony Carden’s Biography

Lesley Saddington is the writer of the biography of AIDS Activist Tony Carden - I Don't Want to Talk About It.

Lesley also happens to be Tony's mum.

I Don’t Want to Talk About It : A Biography of AIDS Activist Tony Carden, takes readers on a mother-and-son journey across the rocky terrain of child sexual abuse, homophobia, and living and dying with HIV/AIDS. It is Tony’s ‘other family’, Sydney’s gay community, who are the catalyst that leads Lesley across a chasm of misunderstanding just in time.

Tony’s story covers the historic record of Sydney’s Chapter of ACT UP and reveals how a group of activists put aside traditional banner-waving and slogan-chanting to turn their protests into theatrical performances, achieving results that saw Australia reverse the rate of infection during the AIDS pandemic, the first country of the western world to do so.

It is Lesley's dream to publish her son's story, and so we are asking the community to support the publishing of Tony's book.

The funds will be used to cover costs including publishing, legal fees and promotion.

More about Tony;

Anthony Carden (1961–1995), activist, studied acting in New York in the early 1980s before returning home to work in theatre, film and television in Sydney and Melbourne. In 1990 after being diagnosed with AIDS, he joined ACTUP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) and became a lobbyist for better standards of medical care, improved hospital facilities, effective safe sex education and to end discrimination for people living with HIV/AIDS.

He helped to organise a demonstration in which 100 beds were taken from St Vincent's Hospital and assembled outside the home of the Minister for Health, Ron Phillips.

With Clover Moore, then the Member for Bligh in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, he helped raise $1 million for the refurbishment of St Vincent's Hospital's Ward 17 South, Australia's first dedicated ward for HIV/AIDS patients. The pair organised AIDS forums at Parliament House. Carden conceived 'the Clovers', a Mardi Gras parade float of people dressed and made up as Moore. He helped launch the advertising campaign 'AIDS is a virus. Viruses don't discriminate. People do'.

Tony died five years after his diagnosis in 1995.