The Canadian series Sort Of is a wry, thoughtful take on family and gendered labour with one of the best nonbinary characters I’ve seen on TV. My review here.
Sort Of | The Saturday Paper
Interview #198: Lian Low | Liminal
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.
China’s LGBTIQ+ movement | ABC News
For ABC, I wrote about how you can’t separate LGBTIQ issues in China from politics, and why international support is a double-edged sword.
The article is a follow-up to my TV story for China Tonight (video below). You can also watch the full 30-min episode on iview, which includes my chat with Stan Grant about the issue, as well as other stories from the China Tonight team.
Recent interviews
Since I started teaching, I’ve said yes to every student journalist who’s wanted to interview me in the hopes that it earns karma for my students.
Not sure if that’s an effective strategy, but here are a couple of the stories: I spoke to Swinburne’s The Wind Down podcast about the Chinese video games industry clamping down on queer narratives, and Robbie Mason from USyd’s Pulp mag about freelancing in this economy.
The Wind Down Ep 23 (Spotify/Apple Podcasts/other platforms)
Underpaid, exploited, revolutionary: how freelance writers in Australia battled the pandemic | 11 October 2021, Robbie Mason, Pulp
China Tonight Season 2 | ABC TV
We’re back!
Episode 1 aired last night with Annie Louey’s story on 躺平 and mine on queer activists, Angharad Yeo on gaming restrictions, and of course Stan Grant and Yvonne Yong with all the news. Catch up on iview and set your alarms for 9:30pm, Monday nights on ABC TV.
Underfoot: history from below | Overland
Jinghua: Part of what we wanted to do was to find the stories missing from the narrative, but I’m really resistant to the idea of heroes… I don’t want to topple one statue and put up another.
Liz: But it’s much harder to find out much about the lives of people who don’t get a statue… We had to go into our research without a predetermined idea of what the final story would be. And it’s this, I think, that’s more useful for those of us on the Left than mining the past for forebears, or new heroes: seeing its radical unfamiliarity.
Liz and I wrote a feature for Overland on Underfoot (our Footscray history multimedia project) and how everyone can make and write history. Read it here.
FCAC Radio
Catch me chatting to Footscray Community Arts Centre’s Vyshnavee Wijekumar about writing, sexting, and fandom ahead of the SMUT: Queer Erotic Fan Fiction Salon this Friday. Listen on Spotify below or find it in your fave podcast platform.
Saving Face | The Guardian
For the Guardian’s Stream Team column, I wrote about the 2004 romcom, Saving Face. Smash Valentine’s Day and the Year of the Ox with this gaysian classic that celebrates mothers and daughters pushing back on patriarchy, shame and prejudice.
Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt) film review | The Guardian
For The Guardian, I reviewed Monica Zanetti’s teen romcom, Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt), a pretty charming story of queer love – romantic, familial, and intergenerational.
‘Zanetti cleverly plays with the idea that our queer predecessors paved the way for how we live now, but as individuals can be just as bumbling and out of touch as anyone else when it comes to dealing with teenagers. We might idolise OWLs (“older wiser lesbians”) but they’re only flightless, bug-eyed humans after all.’
Tell Me Why game review | The Guardian
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.
