Queerstories

Queerstories 2020 is a special series of the Queerstories podcast recorded during the lockdown months of 2020, featuring LGBTQI+ storytellers reflecting on the events of the year.

These stories are about connection to culture and community, how that was impacted by the pandemic and lockdowns, and about the very specific connection that comes through desire. 

Atul Joshi is first up. A former classical musician, Atul lives in NSW's Southern Highlands and works at Bundanon Trust in the Shoalhaven. He has published both fiction and non-fiction widely, and has just completed his Master of Arts in Creative Writing at UTS. Atul recorded this story at home earlier in the year, then I was thrilled to be able to invite him to perform at Queerstories in Wollongong in October, one of our first shows back, in partnership with Wollongong City Libraries.

Sarah Asumadu is a writer and poet. Sarah has written and performed with the Floating Key collective at Melbourne Fringe Festival, she has also contributed to the ‘Where Are You From?’ project exhibited at Blak Dot Gallery. Most recently, her work has been published by FOLK Magazine. Alongside writing, Sarah works for a social enterprise addressing the issues of bullying and prejudice in schools.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Queerstories 2020 is a special series of the Queerstories podcast recorded during the lockdown months of 2020, featuring LGBTQI+ storytellers reflecting on the events of the year.

This week’s stories pertain to a haunting of sorts, from the paranormal to the pathological.

Queenie Bon Bon is a writer, performance artist and sex worker living and working in Narrm/melbourne. Their work focuses on labour and the body. They have created four full length shows - which have toured in Australia, Europe and North America. Their work has been featured on locanto, backpage and in Maximum Rock and Roll and The Lifted Brow. They are a member of Australian sex worker art collective Debby Doesn't Do It For Free and have been part of the Scarlet Alliance executive committee for 5 years. They are the 2020 Recipient of Firstdraft's Writers Program.

Victoria Zerbst is a political satirist, comedy writer and performer for The Feed on SBS. She is a co-founder of the Sydney-based comedy collective Freudian Nip and the 2020 recipient of the ATYP Rebel Wilson Comedy Commission.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Queerstories 2020 is a special series of the Queerstories podcast recorded during the lockdown months of 2020, featuring LGBTQI+ storytellers reflecting on the events of the year.

These stories are about the things that can give you purpose and meaning in the face of destabilising change.

Bronte Noakes has worked with children and young people since they were a child, wiping tears, noses and bums and chasing kids til the cows come home. They're in their Honours year studying Psychology and were one of the first ex-campers to volunteer for Camp Out, a NSW camp for LGBTQI+ teens. When they’re not studying, they’re playing AFL for Sydney Uni or spending time underwater.

Sarah Langston is a queer, disabled, neurodiverse single mother of a disabled non binary kiddo. Her professional background is in early childhood education and ECE advocacy, and she’s currently studying bush regeneration while full time parenting in quarantine with her child. Her main activism focus is advocacy for children and adults with ADHD in every space and place.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Queerstories 2020 is a special series of the Queerstories podcast recorded during the lockdown months of 2020, featuring LGBTQI+ storytellers reflecting on the events of the year.

As if the internet wasn’t already awash with enough flat earthers and people who think they’re aliens, 2020 brought us a whole new onslaught of religious fervour. These next two writers were inspired, this year, to delve into their own cult-ish connections.

Michael Sun is the Culture Editor at Netflix ANZ via Junkee. This year, he is the Kill Your Darlings New Critic, where he writes a regular column blending memoir and criticism of queer work, and his freelance writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Monthly, Vice, ABC Arts, Overland, Liminal Magazine, and more. In his spare time, he’s a freelance graphic designer, he co-hosts the Saturday Lunch show on FBi Radio, and he’s a Board Member of Firstdraft Gallery.

Ernest Price is a writer and former teacher. He works as the Education Officer at the Victorian Association for the Teaching of English, with a focus on supporting the teaching of texts by diverse voices. His writing has been published in Overland. Ernest lives and works on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin nation.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Queerstories 2020 is a special series of the Queerstories podcast recorded during the lockdown months of 2020, featuring LGBTQI+ storytellers reflecting on the events of the year.

Stories about grief, about the way the pandemic impacted our rituals of loss, and the impact of lockdowns on grieving, connection and memory.

Patrick Lenton is the Editor of Junkee. He is the author of the short story collection 'A Man Made Entirely of Bats' and the essay collection 'Uncle Hercules and Other Lies'.

Aurelia St Clair is a German Cameroonian Melbournian comedian, writer, actor. In 2017 she reached the Victorian State finals of the Raw Comedy Competition and she’s since performed at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2018 and 2019, the Melbourne and Sydney Fringe Festivals and Brisbane Funnyfest. She worked as a correspondent and writer for Channel 31s The Leak from 2017-18, co-hosted In Joke on Syn 90.7 FM in 2018 and 2019, and received the Stand Up! Grant, an initiative by the Andrews Labour Government, in 2020.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Queerstories 2020 is a special series of the Queerstories podcast recorded during the lockdown months of 2020, featuring LGBTQI+ storytellers reflecting on the events of the year.

The stories of this series were recorded in sharehouse bedrooms and bathrooms, on outback properties and in suburban homes, rather than at the big celebratory Queerstories events of the past five years. These stories are both about home, and about how our perspective on home shifted in 2020.

Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen is a Vietnamese-Australian writer based in Melbourne. Her work has been featured in publications including Meanjin, The Saturday Paper, Kill Your Darlings, SBS Voices, Rookie and frankie. She was an inaugural recipient of The Wheeler Centre's Next Chapter fellowship in 2018, and works by day as a bookseller and copywriter.

Farz Edraki is a writer, editor, TV producer and researcher whose credits include Tonightly with Tom Ballard and The House with Annabel Crabb. In 2019, she co-hosted the podcast Bite the Ballot and is currently the Deputy Editor (Multicultural) at ABC Life.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Queerstories 2020 is a special series of the Queerstories podcast recorded during the lockdown months of 2020, featuring LGBTQI+ storytellers reflecting on the events of the year.

These stories are about queer, blak family, both in the general sense and also in a very specific sense; they’re about one particular queer and blak family.

Enoch Mailangi is a TV writer and text-based artist based in Lakemba. They are a 2020 Sydney Theatre Company Emerging Playwright, a 2020 Urban Theatre Project Resident Artist, and an MFA student at NIDA.

Nayuka Gorrie is a Kurnai/Gunai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta freelance writer who’s been published widely. They were a Wheeler Centre Next Chapter recipient in 2018 and they’ve written for TV, including Black Comedy, Get Krackin! and The Heights.

Witt Gorrie is a white trans social worker who has worked alongside communities impacted by criminalisation for the past decade. They are currently based at Flat Out supporting survivors of family violence who have experienced criminalisation, duty failures and violence from police. They also provide outreach support to trans and gender diverse people incarcerated across Victorian prisons. Their writing on abolition has been published by the Guardian.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Queerstories 2020 is a special series of the Queerstories podcast recorded during the lockdown months of 2020, featuring LGBTQI+ storytellers reflecting on the events of the year.

This episode's stories both speak to medical intervention, to fear and to hope, and they’re both about pandemics, in their own way.

Holly is a queer solo parent by choice who lives in a little log cabin in the bush with her wild child. She’s a filmmaker, freelance writer, performer, and smutty spoken word artist, and in her spare time, of which she has none, she is the coordinator of Rainbow Families QLD.

Kerry Bashford is a writer, journalist, editor and producer living in Newcastle. He started his queer career as a baby activist, organising rallies at the age of 18 in 1982, before escaping south to the big smoke. After several years of apprenticeship in gay, street and independent presses, like Campaign, and countless queer arts endeavours, like Wicked Women, he scored a job at Ninemsn where he worked as Producer of Online Portal and Entertainment and ended up as movie critic for the network. He ended his corporate career and became a copywriter, editing promotional puffery for outrageous fees while sitting home on the couch in his underwear. (Note: he will only consider further employment offers on those terms.) He has since bought an apartment near the beach back in Newcastle where he lives as a semi-retired journalist, which is a polite way of describing an unemployed writer of a certain age.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Having moved to the Netherlands to meet his gay donor father, a young hetero-ish male - raised by lesbian parents - explores his sexuality and queer identity. 

Michael Kruger is a published author, screenwriter and probably the most overly-sensitive new-age boy working full-time in sports media. He was raised by his two mums in Melbourne, but as gay luck would have it, he looks almost exactly like his donor dad. Michael is finishing a book about his queer family, and about his experience of moving to the Netherlands as a 22 year old to get to know his father. 

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, visit www.maevemarsden.com, and follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brenna remembers her desperate campaign to convince her mothers to give her a sibling.

Brenna Harding is an actor, board member of Wear it Purple, founder of Moonlight Feminist and LGBT rights advocate. She's performed in productions for Melbourne Theatre Company, Sydney Theatre Company, The Old Fitz Theatre, Belvoir St, Malthouse and Griffin Theatre Company. She is best known for her role in Puberty Blues but you might have also seen her in Secret City, The Code, My Place, Packed to the Rafters, A Place to Call Home and Netflix's Black Mirror, directed by Jodie Foster. In 2012, Brenna won the Logie for Most Popular New Female Talent and in 2014 received the Marie Bashir Peace Prize for her contribution to social justice. In 2018, Brenna was a Heath Ledger Scholarship finalist.

Queerstories is an LGBTQI+ storytelling night programmed by Maeve Marsden, with regular events around Australia. For Queerstories event dates, visit www.maevemarsden.com, and follow Queerstories on Facebook.

The Queerstories book is published by Hachette Australia, and can be purchased from your favourite independent bookseller or on Booktopia.

To support Queerstories, become a patron at www.patreon.com/ladysingsitbetter

And for gay stuff and insomnia rants follow me - Maeve Marsden - on Twitter and Instagram.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.