Meet Nevo: girl, boy, he, she, him, her, they, them, daughter, son, teacher, student, friend, gay, bi, lesbian, trans, homo, Jew, dyke, masculine, feminine, androgynous, queer. Nevo was not born in the wrong body and just wants everyone to catch up with all that Nevo is.
At times sensual, always potent, Lemons in the Chicken Wire delivers a collage of work that reflects rural identity through a rich medley of techniques and forms. It is an audacious and lyrical poetry collection that possesses a rare edginess and seeks to challenge our imagination beyond the ordinary.
In this essay, from a collection of essays by Australian women on sexual empowerment, Jax Jacki Brown explores love and desire within – and beyond – the confines of the current social understanding of disability.
Three friends, two love stories, one convention: this fun, feminist love letter to geek culture is all about fandom, friendship, and finding the courage to be yourself.
If she can just keep out of trouble, Mirii Mahoney is going to taste freedom for the first time, but she’s fighting against the system, against the other kids, and against herself.
A split-second of innocent physical contact at Camp Bellflower pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counsellor named Erin. But Camp Bellflower is an impossible place for a girl to fall in love with another girl.
CW: rape
Max Walker is the golden boy, He’s the perfect son, the perfect friend and the perfect crush for the girls at his school. Max Walker has a terrible secret. If it gets out, his perfect life will be blown apart. The consequences are unimaginable. But someone knows his secret and that person must not be trusted.
CW: suicide
When Skim’s classmate takes his own life, the entire school goes into mourning overdrive. It’s a weird time to fall in love, but that’s what happens when Skim starts meeting secretly with her neo-hippie English teacher, Ms Archer.
Jo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley are five best pals determined to have an awesome summer together, and they’re not going to let any insane quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way.
Are Australian schools safe? And if they’re not, what happens when kids are caught in a bleak collision between ill-equipped teachers and a confected scandal? In 2016, the Safe Schools program became the focus of an ideological firestorm. In Moral Panic 101, Benjamin Law explores how and why this happened.
Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults. She uses photographs and words to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during and after their personal acknowledgement of their gender preference, following their journeys to recognise their true selves.
The Swimmer. The Rebel. The Nerd. All Ryan, Harley and Miles had in common was Isaac. They lived different lives, had different interests and kept different secrets. But they shared the same best friend. They were sidekicks. And now that Isaac’s gone, what does that make them?
Sometimes difference can make us the target, particularly when it comes to gender and sexual identity. The books on this list challenge rigid gender binaries and the assumption of heterosexuality, offering a range of stories that explore diverse genders and sexualities, creating a safe space where love is love, and gender and sexuality can be fluid. Encompassing memoir and fiction, these texts experiment with language, character and identity to explore what it means to be queer.
Most of these texts are ‘Own Voices’, meaning they are authored by people from LGBTQI+ backgrounds whose personal experience informs their work or whose central protagonist/s share their identity. Tags relate to the characters in the story.