From our new editor…
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Kia ora koutou, Some of you will already know me as Sarah-FromUpsideDowns, an epithet I’ve been proud to bear since 2017. I am very happy to be introducing myself today as still Sarah-From-UpsideDowns, but now as Sarah-WhoEdits-Chat21 as well. When I first started working for UpsideDowns, I had hardly any experience when it came to families with Down syndrome. A fellow youth group member for a few months when I was 11, the little boy of a friend-ofa-friend in Glasgow, a respect for the oeuvre of Sarah Gordy, and that was about it! It wasn’t the most ordinary way to get a job either. I was new to motherhood and new to Auckland when I posted in the Mt Albert Community Facebook page advertising my tutoring skills (I was also new to Auckland rent!). I never did get any tutoring work, but my post was spotted by Hannah Reynolds, who was then trying to find a replacement for her position as the sole employee of the UpsideDowns Education Trust. We had a coffee, during which she showered my newborn with love and praise, and the rest, as they say, is history. The Down syndrome community were welcoming, inclusive, and patient with me, and for nearly five years now I have been privileged to work with and for Kiwi kids with Down syndrome. My time with UpsideDowns is certainly what has brought me to this role, but I hope it won’t be the only aspect of my experience that will prove useful. Before coming to Auckland, I spent three years in the wonderful city of Glasgow, Scotland, where I completed a PhD in Scottish Literature (it’s a thing!). My thesis topic was on the relationship between Scottish independence and Scottish contemporary literature. So if you want to know how JK Rowling re-colonises Ireland in the Harry Potter series, how Mary Queen of Scots getting her head chopped off was important to Zimbabwe in the 1980s,
