Growing Up Queer in Australia
Page 36
About the editor
BENJAMIN LAW is the author of the memoir The Family Law, which he adapted for SBS TV, Gaysia, and a Quarterly Essay: Moral Panic 101. A columnist for Fairfax’s Good Weekend magazine, Law has also written for over 50 publications internationally and is a co-host on ABC Radio National’s Stop Everything.
About the contributors
ADOLFO ARANJUEZ is editor of film and media periodical Metro and formerly editor-in-chief of sexuality and gender magazine Archer. He is also a freelance writer, speaker and dancer. Adolfo’s nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Meanjin, Right Now, Screen Education, The Manila Review, The Lifted Brow, Cordite and elsewhere.
ROZ BELLAMY is a writer, editor and researcher, whose writing appears in The Big Issue, Huffington Post, Junkee, Meanjin, SBS (online), The Sydney Morning Herald and Ten Daily. Roz is a contributor to Living and Loving in Diversity and Going Postal: More Than ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
ALICE BOYLE studied creative writing, French and Spanish at the University of Melbourne. She’s a writer, ESOL teacher and sometimes-photographer. She lives in Melbourne with her Belgian partner and is currently writing a queer young adult novel.
JAX JACKI BROWN is an LGBTIQA+ disability rights activist, writer and educator, whose work has been published widely. Jax has a passion for intersectional equality and is eternally hopeful that a fair and just world is possible.
JOO-INN CHEW is a writer, and a doctor working in general practice and refugee health. She lives in Canberra with her partner and two kids. She loves diving through green waves, zooming along on her bike, and finding words to decipher the world.
STEPHANIE CONVERY is the deputy culture editor of Guardian Australia. She was formerly deputy editor at Overland magazine and a freelance writer and arts worker in Melbourne. Her first book, Who Killed Davey Browne?, will be published in 2020.
HEATHER JOAN DAY is a mixed-race trans femme witch, writer, musician and multidisciplinary artist living in Melbourne on Wurundjeri land. She writes poetry and short memoir, as well as music that she describes as transsexual gothic grunge pop.
STEVE DOW is a Melbourne-born, Sydney-based journalist who writes for The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, Guardian Australia, Spectrum, Vault and Art Guide. His 2012 collection of essays, Gay: The Tenth Anniversary Collection, is available as an e-book.
MICHAEL FARRELL is a poet from Bombala, New South Wales, now living in Melbourne. He is the author of I Love Poetry and Cocky’s Joy. He co-edited (with Jill Jones) Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets, and he published an alternative scholarly history of Australian poetics, Writing Australian Unsettlement: Modes of Poetic Invention 1796–1945.
NAYUKA GORRIE is a Kurnai/Gunai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta freelance writer.
PHOEBE HART is a writer, director and producer of documentaries, factual content and children’s television. She is also a lecturer in film, television and digital media at the Queensland University of Technology, and principal of Hartflicker, a video and film production company. She is known particularly for her autobiographical road trip movie, Orchids: My Intersex Adventure.
NIC HOLAS is campaigns director at Change.org and the co-founder of The Institute of Many (TIM). He has written for the Guardian, Archer, Hello Mr, Star Observer, Junkee and more.
JUSTINE HYDE is a writer, critic and library director who lives in Melbourne. Her work has been published in The Age, The Saturday Paper, Lithub, The Australian, Meanjin, Seizure, The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings and various anthologies. She hopes to one day write a perfect essay.
ATUL JOSHI was born in Myanmar, to Indian parents. He migrated to Australia as a child in 1971. A former classical musician, he lives in the New South Wales Highlands and works in arts management. His short fiction has been published in The Big Issue, Seizure and Ricepaper Magazine Canada.
GEMMA KILLEN is a writer, editor and academic in gender studies. Her writing focuses on the everyday minutiae of queer life, community and friendship. Her work has appeared in Australian Feminist Studies, Autostraddle, Feminartsy and The Big Issue. When she’s not writing, she’s probably sewing or admiring some handsome cats.
JACK KIRNE is a writer based in Melbourne. His work has appeared in various publications, including Meanjin, Exposition Review and Subbed In. He has published Discount Fabric: The Campaign, a graphic narrative, with his partner, Aaron Billings. He is currently undertaking a PhD at Deakin University.
ARON KOH PAUL is a historian and heritage consultant based in Melbourne. He teaches urban planning, and writes history, historical fiction and occasional political commentary.
BEAU KONDOS is the author of the YA fantasy novel The Path of the Lost. He has also written for The Monthly and The Saturday Paper. When he’s not working at a publishing house, you’ll likely find him making big decisions at his local supermarket’s ice-cream freezer.
SAMUEL LEIGHTON-DORE is a queer artist and writer living on the Gold Coast.
PATRICK LENTON is a writer from Sydney. He is the author of the short-story collection A Man Made Entirely of Bats and the entertainment editor for Junkee.
NATALIE MACKEN is a Sydney-based word tamer. She is the creative director of The Content Folk.
YAMIKO MARAMA is a writer, therapist and food-truck owner. She lives in Melbourne with her favourite person, Gina. Yamiko is a 2018–2019 inaugural Next Chapter Wheeler Centre recipient and is currently writing a memoir on otherness, based on her experiences as a queer woman of colour in Australia.
DAVID MARR has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Saturday Paper, The Guardian and The Monthly, and has served as editor of the National Times, reporter for Four Corners and presenter of ABC TV’s Media Watch. His books include Patrick White: A Life, The High Price of Heaven, Dark Victory (with Marian Wilkinson), Panic and six bestselling Quarterly Essays.
TIM MCGUIRE has written for The Lifted Brow, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, Going Down Swinging and others. He was longlisted for the Richell Prize in 2015 and was a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow in 2017. He’s appeared at Men of Letters, the Emerging Writers Festival and more. From Brisbane, he lives in Melbourne.
M’CK MCKEAGUE is an ex-vegetarian from the Beef Capital of Australia (no Casino, not you). Currently surviving the whims of Melbourne weather, M’ck is a performance maker and set and costume designer working across theatre, installation and social practice.
SCOTT MCKINNON is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space (ACCESS) at the University of Wollongong. He is the author of Gay Men at the Movies: Cinema, memory and the history of a gay male community (Intellect, 2016). Scott’s research on LGBTIQ history has been published extensively in academic journals, as well as The Conversation, SBS Online, ABC News Online and The Star Observer. Scott is vice president of Sydney’s Pride History Group.
NATHAN MILLS is a Brisbane-based arts administrator at La Boite Theatre Company. He is in his final year of undergraduate study at the University of Queensland, majoring in Politics and English.
THOM MITCHELL is a non-binary slashie now living in Naarm.
MIKE MULLINS OAM is the founding director of Performance Space in Sydney. Between 1973 and 1986 he created a number of boundary-testing performances. He then became an executive producer of cultural and corporate events. He is currently writing his memoir, Anxious: The Story of No-One.
DANG NGUYEN was born in a refugee camp in Malaysia in 1992, and was raised almost entirely in Melbourne, Australia. Although he was brought up a child of Flemington, North Melbourne and St Albans, his heart has always belonged to the cafes and gay clubs of Brunswick and Collingwood.
GISELLE AU-NHIEN NGUYEN is a Melbourne-based Vietnamese–Australian writer and bookseller, the commissioning editor for the Feminist Writers Festival, and an inaugural recipient of The Wheeler Centre’s Next Chapter fellowship for 2019. She has been published in Meanjin, The Saturday Paper, Kill Your Darlings, Rookie and Fra
nkie, among others.
ANTHONY NOCERA is a freelance writer and full-time homosexual from Adelaide. His work has appeared in CityMag, Krass Journal, Overland and Vice, among others. His work has been rejected by numerous publications also.
KELLY PARRYloves her girlfriend, kids, mates and writing stories – ferociously. A self-confessed laugh slut, she enjoys nothing more than a good cup of tea, an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race and a quiet night at home, plotting to overthrow the patriarchy.
VIVIAN QUYNH PHAM is an engineering and human-geography scholar interested in making visible the invisible. Recently an Australian Endeavour Fellow at University College London, and the Liveability design expert for the award-winning Desert Rose, Vivian is currently completing her MPhil at the University of Wollongong on moisture in social housing and looking for her next contribution.
SUE-ANN POST was Australia’s first ‘out’ lesbian comedian. She has won several awards for her comedy, published two books and wrote a column for The Age for three years. She is also a poet and playwright. Mostly, though, she is a big tomboy doofus.
OLIVER REESON is an essayist and screenwriter. With Michelle Law, they co-created and wrote Homecoming Queens, an SBS web series about chronic illness in your twenties.
REBECCA SHAW was on the writing team at Tonightly with Tom Ballard and has written for Hard Quiz and Get Krack!n. She was deputy editor at SBS Comedy, and is contributing editor at Kill Your Darlings. She’s written for most places you can think of, and in 2018 a song she co-wrote won the ARIA for best comedy release.
TIM SINCLAIR is a writer of young adult fiction and poetry. His latest novel, Run (a CBCA Notable Book), is a paranoid parkour thriller set in Sydney, which uses concrete poetry to capture the speed and energy of the discipline.
NADINE SMIT is a Registered Nurse and is transgender. She has successfully changed careers and transitioned from living as a man to being the woman she has always known hid within. She has had a fulfilling life, but nothing compares to being true to herself.
THINESH THILLAINADARAJAH is a Tamil Canadian lawyer whose views on queer identity and multiculturalism were shaped by his upbringing in Toronto, where he never felt like he had to pick between his Tamil and Canadian identities. He has found Australian culture more monolithic, and his work focuses on creating space where people can embrace and present all facets of their identity.
HOLLY THROSBY is a songwriter, musician and novelist. She has released four critically acclaimed solo albums, a collection of original children’s songs, and an album as part of the band Seeker Lover Keeper. She is the author of Goodwood and Cedar Valley.
JEAN VELASCO is an Australian writer, of mostly speculative fiction. She is currently based in Madrid, where she works as a teacher and translator.
HENRY VON DOUSSA is a writer and social scientist from Melbourne who grew up on a small farm outside Adelaide. He works for La Trobe University at The Bouverie Centre (Victoria’s Family Institute) and The Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society. The health and wellbeing of families, particularly those affected by parental mental illness, is the current focus of much of his work.
THOMAS WILSON-WHITE is a queer writer, director and screenwriter. His feature debut, The Greenhouse, is set for release in 2019.
FIONA WRIGHT is a writer, editor and critic. She is the author of two collections of essays, Small Acts of Disappearance and The World Was Whole, and a poetry collection, Knuckled. Her poems and essays have been published in The Australian, Meanjin, Island, Overland, The Lifted Brow, Seizure and HEAT.
CINDY ZHOU works as a high-school teacher in Melbourne’s inner west. When not shaping young minds, you can find her gardening, sampling beers or cuddling her greyhound, Fran.