Gina Chick, the inaugural winner of Alone Australia, tells the story of her extraordinary, indomitable life in one of the most powerful, moving memoirs you will ever read.
Shortlisted for the 2025 ABIA Awards, Biography of the Year, The Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year, and Audiobook of the Year
Shortlisted for the 2025 Indie Book Awards, Non-Fiction
Gina Chick, the inaugural winner of Alone Australia, tells the story of her extraordinary, indomitable life in one of the most powerful, moving memoirs you will ever read.
From day one of her wildly unconventional childhood, Gina Chick blazed her own trail, which led her to dance through the hidden world of ’90s Sydney nightlife into the arms of a conman. She fled to the wilderness to find healing, began a wondrous love affair with the deepest lessons life – and death – can offer, and found that all the answers are written in the wisdom of the body and the whirling silence of stars.
If you’re ready to get lost in jungles, wander into wolf-dens, sing with storms, rescue orphaned animals, dive to the depths, dance ’til your knees wobble, fall in love, find yourself by losing it all, and most of all be real; this book is for you.
We Are the Stars is a magic carpet ride through the exquisite mystery of the human heart. You’ve never read anything like it.
‘"I am a storm wrapped in skin", writes Gina Chick in this book full of bliss, sorrow, earth and stars. I love Gina’s courage, her strength and her joy. Above all I admire the life force that guides her through the worst of times to emerge on the other side of that dark river with a truly rare perspicacity. A wild, creaturely memoir that shows us how to really live.’ -- Charlotte Wood, author of Stone Yard Devotional
'Want to know what it’s like to spend time with someone so funny and wise and so brutally honest that your jaw is permanently on the floor and your heart is singing? Gina’s memoir quite simply broke me open. Her powerful poetic mixture of truth, humour, hard-fought wisdom and unblinking authenticity radiates from every page. From the first paragraph it dawned on me that this is unlike anything I have ever read before. I can’t wait to give this book to everyone I love. Read it.' -- Hugh Jackman
‘Gina’s eyes are wolf, her limbs the trees, her heart a moon, her mind the sea. We Are the Stars is an exhilarating story of a life uncontained and it will travel with me forever … an excellent manual for making a friend of life’s intrepid roads and the wisdom that ensues. Let her words churn you up and inspire you to admire your deepest sorrows, laugh when you shouldn’t and above all, make a god of curiosity.’ -- Poh Ling Yeow
There’s nobody like Gina Chick and this book pulses with her intelligence, authenticity and vulnerability, but most of all, with her passionate love of life.’ -- Leigh Sales, author of Any Ordinary Day
‘A book like a huge wave of saltwater; raw and real and true. Chick has gathered a whole life's worth of lessons, recorded them here with honesty, and the result is a completely unique philosophy of life. It wrecked me and woke me the fuck up.’
-- Bri Lee, author of Eggshell Skull
‘We Are the Stars is as much a force of nature as Gina Chick herself. In staring unflinchingly into the cruellest of losses, this book is wise, fierce and unexpectedly life-affirming.’
-- Benjamin Law, author of The Family Law
‘YES is the clarion call, the anthem, the bass drumbeat that infuses Gina Chick’s insistently joyous memoir. She sings, she dances, she embraces it all - every scrap of grass, every mote of dust, every death, every rebirth, every heartbreak, and every single joy. She notices with wide-seeing eyes, and she celebrates with a wide-open heart. We Are The Stars roars with life. Chick not only sits with grief or pain or sensuality or love - she meets them head-on; she leaps in feet-first. This book is a defiant embrace of both living and dying, calling readers to see the wonder that is being mortal. Yes, is the only answer to Chick. Yes. Over and over.’
-- Ailsa Piper, author of For Life
‘Gina Chick showed Australian audiences she can survive alone in the wilderness longer than anyone else. Turns out she can also write better than most too. We Are the Stars is a glorious, lyrical, heart-thumping account of a remarkable life by a remarkable woman. Gina Chick has gifted us a book for our times. May it land in the hearts of many.’
-- David Leser, author of Women, Men and the Whole Damn Thing
Gina Chick is a rewilding facilitator, adventurer, writer and speaker. Writing is in Gina Chick's genes. Her grandmother, Charmian Clift, was an author, essayist and Australia's first female columnist in the early 60's. Charmian married George Johnston (My Brother Jack) and they lived together on Hydra with Leonard Cohen and bohemian expats. Charmian's teenage indiscretion, an illegitimate daughter, was given up for adoption. Gina's mum, Suzanne Chick, who, after finally discovering her mother's identity at 48, wrote her own book, Searching For Charmian, which was shortlisted for the NBC Banjo Award. Gina was one of ten participants of the first series of Alone Australia, made by iTV and screened on SBS in 2023. After 67 days of unforgettable moments of searing vulnerability, Gina was the last person standing, and the second woman to win an Alone solo challenge. Her determination, passion, and love of the natural world endeared her to more than 5.5 million people around Australia. Gina's articles have been published in The Guardian, news.com.au, Mamamia and SBS online. Her first book, We Are the Stars, published by Summit Books at Simon & Schuster, is a bestselling memoir of love, connection and the glorious power of letting go.
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