Red Dirt Poetry Festival have launched their digital 2020 program! I’m in a bunch of events/showcases, including House of Healing: Poetry First Aid, Poet Roulette, and digital poetry experience Architype Augmented by myself and Ray Cox.
Visit the Red Dirt Poetry Festival website for their full program!
My opinion piece / personal essay “Glorious: On body fluidity and reclamation” is up now at Pink Advocate Magazine!
What even are bodies? And how is it possible for bodies to be both solid and fluid, malleable and enhanceable: created to contain multitudes?
In dark jacket with slicked-back hair, I’m ‘sir’ at the grocery store but a quick reflex to ‘ma’am’ as soon as they notice my lips, plumped swollen from windburn. What if I could be both? What if, beyond ‘both’, I was even more?
So proud to have a short story in the Gender Diverse Pronouns issue of Capricious in this Story Bundle, which supports Rainbow Railroad for #PrideMonth 🌈🏳️🌈
An aside: the short story in Capricious, ‘Glitter and Leaf Litter’, is the piece I’m developing into a full length YA verse novel, thanks to my Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship. I love these wonderful non-binary characters so so much 🌈
I am the very very proud recipient of a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship for 2020!
The Hot Desk Fellowships are supported by the Readings Foundation. Myself, along with 20 other fellows, receive a stipend and workspace. While my workspace is currently in Meanjin due to COVID-19, I’m looking forward to collaborating in an online writing space until I’m perhaps able to work in the Wheeler Centre building.
Who are my fellow Fellowship recipients?
Mama Alto, Alex Creece, Monikka Eliah (playwright fellow), Lou Garcia-Dolnik, Veronica Heritage-Gorrie, Natasha Hertanto, Ruby Hillsmith, Georgia Kartas, Kim Lam, Nellie Le Beau, Leah Muddle, Rashmi Patel, Allee Richards, Ariel Ries, Lobna Rouhani, Vince Ruston, Darlene Silva Soberano, Diane Vu, Dženana Vucic, Panda Wong.
What’s my project about?
I will be working on the redrafting of Welcome Home, a Young Adult speculative fiction verse novel. This story focuses on the lives of two non-binary transgender teenagers, who have a strong and intimate platonic friendship. Welcome Home examines concepts of safe spaces through the lens of an abandoned haunted house (in a fictional Queensland location), which provides a home for young people whose gender identities lead to their exclusion in other spaces. This novel is in a first draft stage, and requires redrafting and formatting into verse – the majority of which I will complete during my Hot Desk Fellowship.
This year I had the pleasure of judging the Anne Elder Award alongside Gig Ryan and Marcella Polain. Congratulations to the joint winners:
And to the commended authors:
**For more info and to read the full judges’ statements, visit the Australian Poetry website**
I have a new poem in Issue 7 of Stilts Journal! The poem is an ekphrasis piece inspired by James Gleeson’s Primavera.
**Read the rest of the poem on the Stilts website**
I’m so proud to be published alongside fellow poets Geoff Page, Anne Elvey, Paul Dawson, Gavin Yuan Gao, Luke Best, Tamryn Bennett, Chantelle Mitchell, Milton P. Erlich, Dženana Vucic, Nellie Le Beau, and Stuart Barnes.
I’m so excited to announce I’m facilitating Let’s Talk: Stories, an online writing course of 5 workshops in May and June for young transgender and gender diverse people aged 16-25, thanks to Hunter Gender Alliance (HGA) and Aurora Grants.
Limited tickets available tonight from 6pm!
**Find out more about the course at the HGA website**
I recently spoke with Lip Mag about the 2020 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction, which I have the honour of judging this year alongside Eleni Hale and Jennifer Down.
The Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction calls for stories by women and non-binary writers. What’s your view on diverse representation in publishing? And how do you believe the #ownvoices movement has changed the industry?
I think diverse representation in publishing is extremely important because it opens the door to stories we don’t often hear; to stories that have so often been overwritten or silenced. And I’m seeing a lot more poetry and YA works from gender diverse folks who aren’t your typical ‘poster people’ for diversity – words and works from those assigned male at birth, from those with intersecting marginalisations, from folks of different class backgrounds, from folks who aren’t thin and white. For that reason, I think #ownvoices is moving the industry towards better inclusion: from people writing stories about us and for us, to us writing our own stories.
**Read the full interview on the Lip Mag website**
What will you be looking for when judging the Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction?
Something new that takes me by surprise and shakes up my expectations of story writing, of character, of voice.
Entries for the 2020 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction are now OPEN and close 5pm Friday 17th April, 2020. Submit stories up to 2000 words that engage with the theme ‘future’. For more information, click here.
I have my very first poem in the wonderful Verity La! The piece, titled ‘ringtail, in memoriam’, explores decay and endings, beginnings and small acts of resistance.
… you are ground-sunk
hairs fanning back & sleeping
into leaf litter, the curves
of your bones exposed
sunlit & glowing.
Entries for the 2020 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction are NOW OPEN and I’m super excited to be one of this year’s judges! Please send us your wonderful short stories that engage with the theme ‘FUTURE’.
For more info visit the Lip Mag website.
