Dean Atta on Person Unlimited

Dean Atta, award-winning author and performance poet, was the winner of the 2012 London Poetry Award and was named as one of the most influential LGBT people by the Independent on Sunday Pink List.

He has written two YA novel-in-verses which includes The Black Flamingo which was a top-selling debut of 2020, and was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, CILIP Carnegie Medal, the Jhalak Prize and the YA Book Prize. The Black Flamingo was also awarded the prestigious Stonewall Book Award and the Carnegie Shadowers' Choice Award 2020. Person Unlimited is his non-fiction debut.

You've fought and you've run away.
You've danced with other Black, queer bodies until sunrise.
Sometimes you wanted to be caught and sometimes you wanted to be held.
With all that you've endured, you are nothing less than miraculous.

From choirboy to drag act, grandson to mentor, poet to lover, Dean has played many roles in his life. In this formally inventive, candid and courageous book, he explores what he has carried in his body: wins and losses, shame and pride, pain and joy. Dean also investigates how radical self-acceptance and a willingness to abide with discomfort open up the possibility of a life lived beyond definition: a person unlimited.

"Years ago within living memory this book would have been illegal and Dean could have been imprisoned for writing it. All memoir is a witness statement. Dean Atta, speak your truth and say it loud."

~ LEMN SISSAY