What is ‘normal’ when it comes to our bodies? When we think of what that is, we can’t help but be influenced by the excess of images and ideas of what we should (and shouldn’t) be. Queer bodies, obesity, bodies of colour, disability, illness and more tend to fall outside the narrow scope of the body in Australian collective thinking.

For Talking Writing: The Body, we spent the evening examining what it is to move through the world with a body that can be marginalised by the limiting socially devised definition of what the body should be and do. In this event, writers discussed writing their own bodies, identity and the challenges of representation in a country that is still grappling with notions of what a ‘normal’ body looks like.

Author and Judy Harris Writer in Residence at the Charles Perkins Centre, Tracy Sorensen, chaired this panel featuring author Peter Polites, queercrip poet and historian Robin M Eames, and award-winning Filipina poet and teaching artist Eunice Andrada.