Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 27 June
6:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Writers since time immemorial have connected food and sex. How could we resist?
For our second Speakeasy, we’ll get into the complexity – and deceptive simplicity – of sex, writing, gender, identity and desire, with Dani Weber, Angela Serrano and Dion Kagan. If the brain really is the biggest sex organ, what could go wrong here?
Join us for dinner (and drinks), with an entree of keynotes followed by an (actual) main course, and roundtable conversations between dinner guests and speakers.
Ever had something big to discuss, only to be told not to make a meal of it? Well! At this year’s Emerging Writers’ Festival, no subject is off the menu and three particularly complicated subjects are on it.
Swing by for a great meal (and a drink or two) as we tackle timeless dinner-table taboos with some of the sharpest thinkers we know. We’re talking sex, death and money. Dine out on that.
All Speakeasy meals are vegetarian, with vegan and gluten-free options available at point of booking.
Arrive at 6.30pm for a 7pm start.
Presented in partnership with the Emerging Writers’ Festival 2018.
Featuring
Dani Boi / Dani Weber
Dani Boi is a genderfluid dragtivist. Dani began performing and speaking out on LGBTQIA+ rights while living in San Francisco, and since returning to Melbourne has performed at a variety of queer club nights and community events, including Midsumma Horizon, Honcho Disko, Macquarie University’s Sex & Consent Week, and hosted Dani Boi’s Art of Drag in Warrnambool – an educational non-binary drag showcase.
Performing as a drag king, they explore topics of toxic masculinity, gender fluidity, and consent education through passionate lip syncs and collaborations with other queer artists.
In 2016, they were published in Archer magazine’s 'They/Theirs' issue, and have since become the magazine’s Events Producer. The Guardian also published 'How I fell in love with performing as a drag king', in the wake of their feature in short documentary DANI BOI as part of the Love Bites series to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Mardi Gras.
Dani has been interviewed by Triple J, JOY 94.9 and PBS, and featured on panels for Midsumma Festival and Parents of Gender Diverse Children. They co-produce The Cocoa Butter Club, a quarterly performance night for Indigenous and/or People of Colour, which had a showcase for Midsumma Festival 2017 at Arts Centre Melbourne.
Angelita Biscotti
Angelita Sofia Biscotti is a Spanish-Filipino-Australian fine-art model, photo artist and writer who used to publish work under the name Angela Serrano, and tweet as @angelita_serra. She was a 2017 Hot Desk Fellow at the Wheeler Centre. Her words have been published in Djed Press, Archer, The Lifted Brow, Overland, Peril, Cordite Poetry Review and elsewhere. Her erotic poetry chapbook Else But A Madness Most Discreet is available through Vagabond Press.
Her modelling work has appeared in Pencilled In, Hot Chicks with Big Brains, We Are Something Else and Demasque. Her photography has been exhibited at Midsumma Festival's Queer Economies at St Heliers Street Gallery, and BlackCat Gallery's Square-Circle show. She is an alumna of the Footscray Community Arts Centre's West Writers Group.
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.