writer & thinker
“I’m choosing my words carefully. You know why. You understand what a blank sheet of A4 paper says. If you know, you know. And if you don’t, there’s a cost to explaining it to you.”
My first in-person theatre review since 2020 and it’s a show you really need to see for yourself: Made in China 2.0 at Malthouse Theatre.
For The Guardian, I spoke to Venice Biennale artist Yuki Kihara about fa’afafine community, climate change, and resisting the image of the lone genius in her show Paradise Camp.
Solicited advice for trans & gender diverse folks starting out in the creative industries.
All through May 2022, I’m running five online workshops for trans/nonbinary/gender diverse folks on starting out in the creative industries, featuring an all-star line up:
They’re all free, you can join from anywhere in the world, and you can come to as few or as many as you like. More info at the booking links above. Can’t wait!
Hot off the press! n-SCRIBE 15 is an anthology of 40 works by Darebin writers and artists (including cover artist Tama Sharman) that you can pick up in Darebin libraries, cafes and bookstores for free.
I don’t see a divide between literary and genre. Writing spec fic and horror connects me to a sense of who I am, my roots and psyche where the world of the real and the world of the unreal isn’t so binary.
Lian Low
Lian Low is a writer and a former editor-in-chief of Peril. I interviewed her for Liminal, mining her insights on the queer, the monstrous, and the last thirty years of Asian Australian arts and culture.
But essentially space is also land. I think that’s where I contest this differentiation between ‘IRL and URL’ digital and physical space. They aren’t separate. There’s no third space that we occupy online. Our government dictates how we access digital spaces and connections, and infrastructures are imbued by the people who made them.
Sab D’Souza
I loved talking to artist Sab D’Souza about feelings and the internet for the Liminal Magazine x Hyphenated Biennial series. Read it here.
For Liminal magazine, I spoke to Hyphenated Biennial artist Jenna Lee about art versus craft, what’s behind a book cover, and the history of the pearling industry.
I put together a playlist for Double J – hear and read here.
I was on the radio last week chatting to Tim Shiel about Wuhan punk and Chinese rock music more broadly. Catch up here if you missed it. Big thanks to Tim and Dylan for having me on!
For The Guardian, I wrote about the migrant workers behind the ‘made in Australia’ label and how their winning campaign for equal rights might be instructive for other gig economy workers today.
I talked to Emma Do and Kim Lam, the writer and illustrator of Working From Home, a graphic narrative about Vietnamese outworkers in the garment industry, and Nguyet Nguyen and Beth McPherson, veteran manufacturing workers and organisers in the textile, clothing and footwear union.
Jinghua Qian 