Retelling is a means of refracting the white beam of light we’ve been given by the fairy tale canon, and revealing the rainbow within.

Yen-Rong Wong talks about her new book, Me, Her, Us, exploring race, sex, pleasure, kink, familial expectation and identity.

I once entertained the idea of posting a selfie online, three hours into my abortion, revealing me swathed in my own sweat.

I took refuge in the archives of lesbian literature, which felt like the only way I could connect to my community and their history.

The heart of this story is a karaoke booth in LA’s Koreatown where four queer Arabs are belting Queen at the top of our lungs.

For so long, I perceived my femininity as something that made me visible or vulnerable, but in the pages of Dress Rehearsals, I was inspired to create a place where those feelings could coexist beside joy and euphoria.

Finding people who honor your full self is not easy, but when you do, you have begun relearning love, you have found chosen family.

An extract from Yves Rees’ book All About Yves: Notes from a Transition: Tonight, we insist on our existence. Together, we are real.

Joe is a conversion therapist hired by my parents to make their child less gay. Preferably straight, otherwise committed to celibacy.

Poetry and storytelling have also allowed me to explore my own narrative and identity, giving me the opportunity to write myself into existence and create the trans-queer stories I never read when I was a kid.

I have been thrown in jail multiple times simply for existing in public. I’ve become wiser and stronger because of my traumas.

We might recognise this as compulsory heterosexuality. I knew it was not exactly what was expected of me, to be warm in the hush of her bed.

SJ Norman is a writer, artist, and curator who works across performance, installation, text, sculpture, video, and sound. He has won numerous art awards, including a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship and an Australia Council Fellowship, and was the inaugural winner of the KYD Unpublished Manuscript Award.  SJ spoke to Yves Rees about his debut book, …

The following is an excerpt from Girl, Transcending: Becoming the woman I was born to be by AJ Clementine. When people ask how I came out to my parents, I tell them I didn’t have to. It was always known that I was a girl – it’s just that none of us knew how to put …

Outside my window the sky is heavy and grey, much like the collective mood in Melbourne with each lockdown update. When Tilly Lawless answers the phone, her voice is bright and clear. Her laughter drowns out the rain and I feel the Sydney sunshine pulsing through the phone. This is one her gifts: to bring …

My adolescence began when I was 19 years old, emotionally at least. It started, as things often do, with a book. I was in my first year at university. I had been bemoaning the secondary school final exams for eviscerating my reading habits. Many of my peers complained of a similar ailment: “I miss reading …

Ella Baxter is a young writer who has a deep connection to ritual, art and ceremony through her small business making bespoke death shrouds for funerals. Her poetry has been published in Spineless Wonders, Gargouille Literary Journal, and Bowen St Press. New Animal is being adapted by Marieke Hardy for a television series. New Animal has also been sold to Picador …

Nevo Zisin is a Jewish, Queer, non-binary activist, public speaker and writer. In this Archer Asks, they discuss their new book ‘The Pronoun Lowdown’.

Ah, beauty norms, my least favourite oxymoron. There is nothing ‘normal’ about heteronormative beauty. What we’re told are ‘beautiful’ characteristics usually represent the outliers of the diverse toolbox of human features. And this thing – ‘beauty norms’ – seems to predominantly hang itself off those of us who identify as femme. It drapes itself over …

It is late November 1943, and a man in his late 30s walks down the dingy streets of Montmartre, Paris. He smokes the last precious breath of a cigarette whilst a truck carrying German troops rushes past him, splashing water onto his pants leg. This man has recently left prison with a large manuscript for …

André Aciman is the critically acclaimed author of Call Me By Your Name and the sprawling Enigma Variations. Ava A spoke with André at the Sydney Writer’s Festival about the thematic elements he uses to produce his powerful prose and the novel-turned-movie that tugged the world’s heart strings. Ava: Can you speak to the significance of exploring queer, …

Samantha X is a British-born, Australian-based, journalist-turned-escort-turned-writer who now also manages her own escort service, Samantha X Angels. When not juggling her own business and client-base, Samantha is frequently sought by the media  for her pundit insight into the much maligned and misunderstood sex worker trade.  SE: What makes a good client? SX: What makes a good client is reliability, seemingly a …