RISING STAR FINALIST
Dylan Conway from Brothers and Books was an active, successful infantry officer in the Australian Army when a little-known disease left him bedridden for months and ate away at his mental health. But one book was all it took to begin to heal mentally and to spark the idea for the Brothers and Books bibliotherapy charity. For his incredible work, Dylan is a finalist in the Rising Star category of The King’s Trust Beyond Service Awards 2024.
Meet Dylan
Dylan Conway is a man who can talk.
He does it well. He does it fast. And it’s often about books.
But this former infantry officer can walk the walk, too.
Dylan is the founder of the Brothers and Books charity and probably Australia's greatest spruiker of bibliotherapy - the practice of reading to improve mental health and wellbeing.
The charity, founded in 2020, sets up community libraries throughout Australia and promotes reading and bibliotherapy.
Back in 2019, while serving in the Australian Army in Townsville, Dylan was struck down by pilonidal sinus disease. This saw him undergo nine surgeries on his lower back and about a year spent immobile.
“I had all this great purpose (before the disease) and forward trajectory, being an infantry officer,” he said.
“But I lost all of that. I was incredibly depressed.”
Then the book, Yes to Life by Viktor Frankl, rocked up at Dylan’s door.
The contents of the book changed his perspective, while the realisation reading could positively impact mental health sparked the idea for Brothers and Books.
“For the four hours or so that it took to read Yes to Life, I found that all of this mental anguish and rumination about my physical condition seemed to dissipate,” the 30-year-old said.
“After wallowing in my own self-pity for three months and having five surgeries, he then committed to just reading and consuming as much knowledge as possible.
“For the next four surgeries, I was able to implement what I had learned through reading - the gratitude, the mindfulness, the knowledge, the different frames of reference - and I didn't have any issues with mental anguish.”
So, while still serving fulltime in the Army, Dylan created Brothers and Books.
And while reading gave him the idea to create the charity, it also taught him how to go about it.
Through books he learnt about finance, accounting, marketing and setting up a charity.
Dylan’s time in uniform also set him up for running Brothers and Books with integrity and purpose.
“The values I was able to learn throughout my tenure, of leadership, altruism, commitment to learning and wanting to give back through service, all lead to my ability to continue to pursue the charity’s goals and its ambitions,” he said.
“Without those intrinsic values through a career within the ADF, and knowing their importance within leadership, the charity would not have been able to get to where it is today.”
Brothers and Books has now set up 100 community libraries, distributed up to 14,000 fiction and non-fiction books throughout Australia and has a social media reach of 150,000 people a month.
Dylan discharged from the Army at the start of this year and his vision is to build Brothers and Books to a point where it has a presence in every organisation in Australia.
This year, Dylan also added finalist in The King’s Trust Beyond Service Awards to his list of achievements.
He is one of three people in the running for the Rising Star Award.
“It's something I'm super grateful for,” he said.
“It’s a great honour and there's a number of prestigious and incredible people that are also finalists.”
