New newsletter, who dis?

Dear friends,

So much is going on right now and social media is a bin fire, so I thought I’d set up a newsletter for people to connect with my new writing, arts events and radio work.

I’ve had a few new essays published recently that you can check out for free online here:

Trans Histories and the Legacy of Jack Jorgensen

In 1893, a 42-year-old man died on the floor of a rickety old stockman’s hut in Elmore, a small Victorian town on the lower reaches of the Campaspe River. He’d refused multiple offers to be taken to the nearby hospital in Bendigo and took his last gasping asthmatic breaths huddled in a dusty blanket… (read more here)

Beware the Funky Murals: Artwashing the Suburbs

A HIP PINK and teal mural appeared outside the St Albans Woolworths in Melbourne’s outer north-west recently. In the image a young woman in a patterned headscarf and sneakers squats by a small child, perhaps her daughter, as they separate organic from recyclable waste… (read more here)

That essay is the first of four pieces I’ll be writing for the new Griffith Review website as one of their three regular contributors.

The next one, a love letter to calls for submissions, will be posted in May. The Griffith Review have been hugely supportive of my work, they also published by longer essay Detachable Penis: Gender Dismembered in the recent Counterfeit Culture #79 edition of their journal.

It’s been a huge month for Gemma and I in radio land, which we do regularly but often forget to promote or celebrate after we leave the studios due to our slew of other commitments.

ABC History Listen

Our ABC Radio National Series Crossing Time: A History of Transgender Australia was commissioned by the ABC in the lead up to Sydney World Pride. We were guided through this brand new process by the inimitable radio producer and sound engineer James Milsom, who Gemma used to work with in community legal centre land. Thank you James!

Listen to Part 1

Listen to Part 2

Triple R

Hamish is back as our regular Queer View Mirror co-host, which airs every Wednesday at 1pm on Triple R. You can listen back to all of our episodes here.

This week we hosted a really important conversation with T-Rex from Dykes on Bikes Melbourne about the shocking TERF/fascist events of 18th March, and a discussion with Shannon Molloy about his new book ‘You Made me this Way,’ about male childhood sexual abuse. A heavy but important week of conversation.

Finally, I’ll be appearing at the Q-Lit Festival of Queer Writing at Geelong Library on 1st April to chat about #ownvoices writing with my co-editor of Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia Yves Rees. We are both really looking forward to it, me especially as I am catching up with my old mate Lucas from my days working as a poultry industry organiser at the NUW (now UWU). See you soon Lucas!

That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll keep posting this newsletter whenever I have a bunch of updates so I can wean myself off Instagram and stop getting tricked into buying new backpacks! Please let anyone who might want to hear about what I’m up to know about this newsletter. If you have your own, tell me about yours too please.

YFTR,

Sam