Darling Humans

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The humans who inhabited the edges of Kings Cross were invisible. Passersby averted their eyes. Refused to notice them. Acknowledge their existence.

The proposition came to me as I walked the streets - it must have been waiting on a Kings Cross corner for someone to pass by and be seduced by it: their stories were to be told, someone was to pay homage to the street community. 

I was  drawn in. The idea had lips and legs and a heartbeat. I said yes and became that one. This is the story I was meant to write. #darlinghumans 

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Intoxicated with the non-stop pleasure playground of Kings Cross (Sydney), would-be writer, Grace Heers, abandons conventional life to seek her muse on the streets of the Cross. The place never sleeps, and the revelry calls to her at all hours of the day and night. She answers, eating up the wildness and washing it down with the river of booze that flows through the hotels and clubs of Kings Cross. She gets up close with those living on the fringes, the fascinating parade of human all-sorts; a hunter-gather sifting through wrecked lives for stories.

Her obsession with the beauty and savagery compels her and what she finds is achingly raw: the characters flaunt their chemical dependencies and their damage, unable or unwilling to hide them. She pushes deeper, sets her gaze, intent on uncovering the forbidden. She wants to see all of it.

Over time, Grace begins to recognise her own cravings running through the ravaged bodies around her and is forced to reckon with her love affair with alcohol, her own story, the reasons she is here.

Darling Humans is a deeply personal portrayal of life on the streets of Kings Cross and a poignant tribute to the courage and kindness to be found here. It pulls no punches inviting you to partake of the tenderness and brutality of its humanity .

This intimate memoir will make your heart ache with the beauty of all of us: darling humans.