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 …

Krissy Kneen is a Brisbane-based author best known for her erotic fiction, including her most recent novel An Uncertain Grace, published this year by Text Publishing. Stranger in the Dark is Kneen’s ongoing project for Australian literary journal The Lifted Brow, a subscription series of 12 monthly emails being sent out over the course of …

This is the second instalment of a four part series on the state of queer young adult fiction in Australia. Read the first instalment here.  There’s a particular kind of pain that comes with the realisation that even within queer stories for Young Adults (YA), queer voices are a minority. It’s a double-punch of feelings of …

This is an excerpt from Pink Ink: The Golden Era for Gay and Lesbian Magazines by Bill Calder, out now.   The late 20th century was a golden era for Australian gay magazines and newspapers: more than five million copies of publications were printed annually at its peak, with revenues approaching eight million dollars a year.  Yet there …

Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars and Theology Before Stonewall explores lesbian community spaces in America in the mid 20th Century.

In English, words describing sex and the body hold the highest level of taboo, amongst the various profanities.

Popular TV is now littered with lesbians: Orphan Black, The L Word, Sugar Rush, Lip Service, Lost Girl, Glee… need I go on? Cheesy or not, we’re out there in prime time. What draws me to these programs is their realism: lesbians exist in their everyday ordinariness (well, and with superpowers). I can’t say the …

“Porn Star Runs for Lord Mayor,” the headlines said, alongside a photograph of me in fuchsia and black latex with a hot pink PVC flogger. If I was going to come out, I may as well do it in style. I’m quite sure my parents knew all along. I started taking my clothes off in …