writer & thinker
‘The novel toys with the frame of a feminist revenge fantasy but Yannie makes an atypical heroine. Her rage is not sexy or witty or glamorous. It’s curdled resentment, sour and hard, obsessive and cracked.’
Read the rest of my review of SL Lim’s Revenge in The Saturday Paper today.
I’m in the Spring 2020 edition of Meanjin with a review of Mirandi Riwoe’s Stone Sky Gold Mountain. Grab a print copy or subscribe online to read.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jinghua Qian 