Queer Critics
A new podcast and review series exploring the Australian LGBTQIA+ literary canon
Subscribe/listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to find your podcasts—or tune in right here!
Read the Queer Critics Series Essays
What Life is Really Like: On Holding the Man by Timothy Conigrave
Nigel Featherstone
Holding the Man reveals a young man confident with his body, and with the bodies of other boys and men, most of whom seemed to know exactly how things worked. How did he have this confidence? Wasn’t he worried about being bashed, or merely rejected?
Water is the Last Thing to Get Dark: Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well
Dženana Vucic
This gothic masterpiece by one of Australia’s most esteemed authors plumbs the depths of internalised shame and lesbian longing.
Does Australia Have a Queer Literary Canon?
Rebecca Starford
Our new podcast series examines the LGBTQIA+ books that have had a profound and lasting impact on life and literature in Australia.
This Secret Valley: Danielle Laidley’s Don’t Look Away
Sam Elkin
What does it take to be the first, to walk the path untrodden? This groundbreaking memoir charts the challenging journey from AFL legend to trans icon.
Lesbians and Palimpsests: On Beverley Farmer’s Alone
Madeleine Gray
This lyrical, tender and devastating exploration of a young woman’s sapphic obsession and heartbreak leaves a lasting mark on its readers.
It’s Never Too Late To Come Out: Sumner Locke Elliott’s Fairyland
Sam Twyford-Moore
What was it like to be an Australian gay man in the 30s and 40s? This final novel by a once bestselling author offers a searing insight into a lifelong journey to self-acceptance.
Queering Country: On Heat and Light by Ellen van Neerven
Raelee Lancaster
In shifting the mainstream perception of genre fiction, we can also reconceive the idea of where Blak queer bodies can and cannot exist. We can place Blak queer bodies in a futurescape once denied to us.
