My first game review for The Guardian looks at Tell Me Why, a narrative adventure from French studio Dontnod and the first major game to feature a playable transgender character.
Sexting at the end of the world | Kill Your Darlings
I’m often homesick for the internet I grew up with, where the dominant tone was painful sincerity rather than snappy wit, and no one had to have a body unless they wanted one.
Here’s my essay for Kill Your Darlings: a juicy deep dive on sexting in quarantine, internet nostalgia, catfishing, anonymity, romance, text-based gender affirmation, and coming unfleshed.
Still life | The Saturday Paper
I’m delighted that my first piece for The Saturday Paper is a poem: this poem, which was originally commissioned as part of Assembly For The Future.
Liminal: Interview #147 — Jinghua Qian
If you read one thing about me, let it be this interview in Liminal magazine. Thanks Maddee Clark for untangling a decade of my work – from poetry to journalism and beyond – and Viet-My Bui for the beaut illustrations.
Adding people of colour to a racist workplace isn’t the answer | Overland
For Overland, I wrote about how I’m over being the only one in the room, or trying to change things from the inside – and how our media regulations are broken when it’s easier to publish something racist than to call it racist.
Mutual obligation is ritual humiliation
I wrote a quick opinion piece for The Guardian about going on the dole and navigating the confusing, punitive mutual obligations system. Shout out to the Australian Unemployed Workers Union, who have been a huge support in this time and one of few groups consistently advocating to raise the rate and suspend mutual obligations.
Yellow peril isn’t what it used to be
My Meanjin piece from the Summer 2019 issue is now online if you’re interested. It’s a review of The Chinawoman, a book about a white woman sex worker who was murdered in 1856 Melbourne, and it’s also a reflection on Chinese-Australian history, Aboriginal deaths in custody today, who is worthy of protection, who is disposable, and how that’s shifted.
The Baby-Sitters Club: the perfect PG escape for millennials and their kids – or anyone, really
Ann M Martin’s series was a staple of my childhood and luckily the Netflix reboot is excellent. I wrote about it for The Guardian.
Still life
Earlier this month I was one of several artists-in-residence for Assembly for the Future, an incredible project that saw visionaries like Claire G Coleman, Scott Ludlam and Alice Wong address us from the end of this decade, and other respondents and participants theorise how to get there. Here’s my creative response, a poem remembering 2020 from 2029, available below in both audio and text (best viewed on desktop, tablet, or phone in landscape mode).
You’ll find all the provocations, artworks, and dispatches from the future on the BLEED festival website and the Things We Did Next website.
Continue reading “Still life”Genderfeels in nomads’ land
In urban, western settings, I’m usually read as a woman, albeit a queer sort. In the country, I more often pass as a boy. There’s a tangy pleasure in that, in being called sir and shuaige and brother.
As a genderfluid, nonbinary person, being clocked as one thing in the morning and another in the afternoon feels like the closest I will get to recognition. This havoc can be a delight, but also a complication. A liability.
Jinghua Qian, Genderfeels in nomads’ land, Them
My essay on traveling through Central Asia as a nonbinary person is out today in Them, edited by none other than Meredith Talusan, a writer I’ve been following for years. I’m so thrilled with this one – go read it now!
Jinghua Qian 