Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Friday 28 November
1:00 PM - 4:30 PM
The Queer Writing Unconference is co-presented by Archer Magazine and the Emerging Writers’ Festival. In three separate sessions, they’ll explore the past, present and future of queer writing and representation. How does Australia censor writing about diverse sexuality and gender? Are we seeing more queer characters in our literature and media? And how do we push queer writing into the mainstream?
Speakers include Hares & Hyenas’ Crusader Hillis, Amy Middleton of Archer and disability activist Jax-Jacki Brown.
Presented in association with the Emerging Writers' Festival and Archer Magazine.
Featuring
Dion Kagan
Dion Kagan is a writer, editor and researcher. His writing has appeared in the Sydney Review of Books, Australian Book Review, LitHub, Metro, Kill Your Darlings, The Big Issue, The Conversation, Archer and more. He is a regular columnist for The Lifted Brow and a co-host on fortnightly culture podcast The Rereaders. His book, Positive Images, came out with I.B. Tauris in 2018. Dion has a PhD from the University of Melbourne where he lectured in gender and cultural studies. He is now a books editor at Black Inc.
Juliana Qian (Lia Incognita)
Lia Incognita is a Shanghai-born cultural commentator living in Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri country. Her work has been published in Peril, Overland and Mascara.
As one third of the Ladies of Colour Agency, Lia has been lambasted on Today Tonight and thrown her hair across the Famous Spiegeltent, and she’s facilitated many happy hook-ups through writing for flagging opinicus rampant, a Melbourne blog that reinvented traditional hanky code from a feminist and pangender perspective.
Since 2012, Lia has been a presenter and producer for Queering the Air on 3CR Community Radio.
Tim Christodoulou
Tim Christodoulou is a 19-year-old Melbourne-based LGBT activist and the partnerships manager of Minus18, Australia’s national organisation for LGBT youth.
Supporting over 100,000 young people each year through youth-led initiatives, events and online networking, Minus18 advocates for an Australia free from homophobia and transphobia.
Quinn Eades
Quinn Eades is a researcher, writer, and poet whose work lies at the nexus of feminist and queer theories of the body, autobiography, and philosophy. Eades is published nationally and internationally, and is the author of all the beginnings: a queer autobiography of the body, and Rallying.
Eades is a Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at La Trobe University, as well as the founding editor of Australia's only interdisciplinary, peer reviewed, gender, sexuality and diversity studies journal, Writing from Below. He is currently working on a collection of fragments written from the transitioning body, titled Transpositions.
In 2015 Quinn Eades changed his name and gender. Prior to 2015, he was writing and speaking as Karina Quinn.
Author photograph by Jamie James.
Jax Jacki Brown
Jax Brown (they/them) is an esteemed disability and LGBTQIA+ rights activist, writer, educator and consultant. Their tireless commitment to LGBTIQA+ disability human rights and advocacy has been recognised with a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).
Jax utilises their experience as a queer, trans wheelchair user to explore intersectional identities. They view disability as a socio-political issue of intersectional equality, access, and human rights.
Jax also runs their own business in LGBTIQA+ disability rights and inclusion where they provide sought after guest speaking, education, workshops and training for community members and allies.
Jax is the co-chair of Inclusive Rainbow Voices: a new organisation for LGBTIQA+ people with disabilities. They have served on the Victorian Disability Advisory Council, Victorian Government’s LGBTI Taskforce Health and Human Services Working Group, and the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Disability Reference Group.
Jax’s work has been published widely online and in several anthologies: Queer Disability Anthology (2015), QueerStories: Reflections on Lives Well Lived from Some of Australia's Finest LGBTIQA+ Writers (2018), Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories (2019), Growing up Queer in Australia (2019) and We've Got This: Stories by Disabled Parents (2022).
Their memoir in the making, ‘Exile and Pride’ received Runner Up in the category 'Self Told Stories by Writers with a Disability' in the Lord Mayor's Creative Writing Awards 2022.
View Profile
Amy Middleton
Amy Middleton is a Melbourne-based journalist and writer, who founded Archer Magazine, Australia’s first journal of sexual diversity, in 2013.
Archer is published twice-yearly by Amy and a small team, and its readership is growing at breakneck speed. Amy has written and edited for some of Australia’s most iconic magazines including Bulletin, Rolling Stone, Australian Geographic and The Big Issue.
Crusader Hillis
Crusader Hillis is a writer, editor, curator and producer. He co-founded (with Rowland Thomson) the queer bookshop Hares & Hyenas in 1991.
In its 23-year history, Hares & Hyenas has presented over 700 literary and performance events, both here and interstate. Since becoming a licensed performance venue in 2012, the venue has presented over 300 events ranging from spoken word to circus, burlesque, dance and theatre.
Rowland and Crusader believe in community development from the ground up, and have helped to develop cultural work by many in our community who would not otherwise have the opportunity. In particular they have worked to develop arts and cultural expression by transgender, disabled, Deaf, Indigenous, HIV-positive and sex-positive people from all backgrounds and persuasions, to name just a few communities they have worked with. Hares & Hyenas has deservedly won the hearts of Melburnians and continues to push the boundaries in all directions.
Crusader’s fiction and non-fiction has been published in magazines and newspapers here and in the UK. He has had a parallel career in the arts, having worked as marketing manager at Melbourne Festival, director/CEO of Gasworks Arts Park and working as a freelance consultant and writer for a host of Australian arts organisations.