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Radio Show appearence for Blind Disabled Author

Author and poet Shirley Cheng will be appearing live on the radio program, Starstyle-Be the Star You Are! with host Cynthia Brian, on Wednesday, August 3, 2005 at 6:20-6:40 pm PST/9:20-9:40 pm EST. Shirley will be interviewed about her books, with the focus on The Revelation of a Star",s Endless Shine.

Shirley Cheng (1983), a blind and physically disabled author of three books, was diagnosed with severe juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at only eleven months old. Due to years of hospitalization, she received no schooling until age eleven. Having achieved grade level in all areas after merely 180 days in a special education class in elementary school, she was transferred to a regular sixth grade class in middle school. Unfortunately, Shirley lost her eyesight at the age of seventeen. After a successful eye surgery, she hopes to earn science doctorates from Harvard University.

Shirley Cheng is the author of Daring Quests of Mystics, written and published at the age of twenty. Her autobiography, The Revelation of a Star",s Endless Shine: A Young Woman",s Autobiography of a 20-Year Tale of Trials and Tribulations (ISBN: 1-4116-1860-2), was self-published at age twenty-one, as well as Dance with Your Heart: Tales and Poems That the Heart Tells (ISBN: 1-4116-1858-0), an anthology of inspirational and fantasy short stories and poems she had written between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. She had been published twice before her writing career. One of her short stories, Mary Miller, the Elusive Lady, was published by the Poughkeepsie Journal in 1997, and a poem, The Colors of the Rainbow, was published in Celebrate! New York Young Poets Speak Out in 1999.