For The Saturday Paper, I reviewed She and Her Pretty Friend, an appealing and accessible history of queer women’s lives in Australia from roughly 1830 to 1980. There’s a lot I liked about it and a few things that bugged me too. As always, I can send a read link if you can’t access it through the paywall, just leave a comment.
Scrimshaw code-switches easily between the cautious register of the historian and the more colourful lexicon of chronically online queers, reading real events in relation to memes and fandom tropes such as “oh my god, they were roommates” and “be gay, do crime”. The effect is chatty and conspiratorial, like catching up with a friend who can’t wait to tell you about what she just read, and it’s endearing to witness her transparent disappointment when women treat each other badly or don’t get the life we feel they deserve.
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.
Dr Maddee Clark and I are editing n-SCRIBE 15, the City of Darebin’s annual lit mag, and we’re taking submissions from any writers and artists who live, work or study in Darebin. Send in your best fiction, non-fiction, poetry, memoir and artwork before 6 October 2021. Published contributors will receive $100. All the info here.
Applications are now open for Djed Press’s editorial mentorship, a 10-week crash course on editing and publishing aimed at training an aspiring editor of colour.
You get one-on-one training with industry professionals (including me, Evelyn Araluen, Khalid Warsame, Adolfo Aranjuez, Dr. Tresa LeClerc, Marisa Wikramanayake and Djed Press founder and editorial director Hella Ibrahim), paid editing experience, and a lot of other material resources and support. I’ll be delivering the non-fiction editing intensives in week 5 (editing news, commentary, and criticism) and week 6 (editing narrative non-fiction, memoir and personal essays).
You don’t need to have any editing experience but you do need to be keen, based in Australia, at least 18 years old, and (obviously) a person of colour. Full details of the mentorship here. Applications close Monday 29 March 2021.
Jinghua Qian 