Australian LGBTIQA+ Arts, Writing & Ideas
August nearly over, but still time to curl up on a cold wintry night the Bent Street Cafe to read some insightful Non-fiction – including Intersex People & Internalised Corrective Bodily Bias by Mandy Henningham and Tiffany Jones. There is also Love’s Pure Light – A Reflections on the Passage of Marriage Equality by Michael Bernard Kelly – a talk that Michael gave at Sydney Metropolitan Community Church on Christmas Eve last year.
In Fiction we have Two Wild Outlaws by James May.
Visit the Bent Street Cafe for three new Interviews. Tina Healy is an advocate, peer support worker and an elder in the transgender community. Ashley Sievwright talks with us about the highs and lows of publishing and the idea of ‘Australian Gothic. Steve R. E. Pereira talks with us about South Asian queer writing.
In Poetry we have Tina Healy’s poem We Were The Ones That Went Before, and Post-Optimistic by René Bennett.
In Fiction we have an excerpt from Ashley Sievwright’s novel-in-development Slightly Foxed and Steve R. E. Pereira’s short story A Dolphin in the Ganges.
Bent Street gathers writing, art and ideas from the Australian LGBTIQA+ community, plus interested overseas friends. Submissions appear in the Bent Street Cafe and from this and other sources we assemble the print yearbook. Forward this post to anyone you know writing or performing or creating, or ideating in the ‘queer sphere’.
Bent Street is now open for submissions at all times during the year. We will look to publish material ongoing in the Bent Street Cafe – an online publication space. From this and many other sources we will compile the print yearbook, to be published in December 2018.
Drop into the Cafe now to read:
On the 8th of March 2018 the ANU School of Sociology hosted a provocative event at the Smith Bookshop Canberra featuring Bent Street 1 2017 authors Professor Mary Lou Rasmussen and Simon Copland. Hosted by Bent Street editor Dr Tiffany Jones – whom the ANU School of Sociology flew in from Macquarie University Sydney – this Canberra Bent Street Launch featured several talks inspired by the journal.
The event centred around a challenging extended Q&A session on the key themes of Rasmussen and Copland’s joint book chapter: “Safe Schools, Marriage Equality and LGBT Youth Suicide“. These academics did not shy away from the big questions; they readily deconstructed how both the media and activists portrayed LGBTIQA+ youth in the Safe Schools and marriage equality debates of 2017. They grappled with both the limited value and specific problems of a focus on issues of suicide; calling for more complex considerations of the way victim narratives are used in queer political campaigns and thinking.
Audience members from politics, academia, education, the arts and other fields offered insightful reflections on the complexity of youth and queer identities in 2018 and posed several curly questions on new directions moving forward in research, media, activism and other areas.
Bent Street would like to thank the ANU School of Sociology for a providing a safe space to explore dangerous ideas, queer representation, and contemporary political issues of social importance to diverse communities.
Tonight – in about 4 hours – Safe Schools, Marriage Equality, and LGBT Youth Suicide: Bent Street book launch at ANU with:
Tiffany Jones (Bent Street editor), Simon Copland, Mary Lou Rasmussen.
Details:
