The Only Gay Book in the Village

When Alan Hollinghurst won the 2005 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty, the mainstream press celebrated it as the first time a gay novel had taken home the award.
But what makes a piece of writing gay? The author? The subject matter? The characters? Is Queer literature alive and well in Australia and what value is there in identifying it as such?
We ask some of Australia’s finest gay and lesbian writers if they are Gay and Lesbian Writers. How central is sexuality to their work?
Featuring

William Yang is a writer and visual artist. William Yang was born in North Queensland, Australia. He moved to Sydney in 1969 and worked as a freelance photographer documenting Sydney’s social life which included the glamorous, celebrity set and the hedonistic, sub-cultural, gay community In 1989 h... Read more

Fiona McGregor is a Sydney writer and artist working across a range of disciplines including writing, performance, video and installation. She writes novels, essays, articles and reviews, and has published 5 books. Her latest is the bestselling novel Indelible Ink published by Scribe in June 2010. H... Read more

Sophie Cunningham is the author of five books, the most recent of which is City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death & the Need for a Forest. She is a former publisher, former editor of Meanjin, former Chair of the Literature Board of the Australia Council and was a co-founder of The Stella Prize.... Read more

Benjamin Law writes books, TV screenplays, columns, essays and feature journalism. He’s the author of the memoir The Family Law (2010), the travel book Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East (2012) – both nominated for Australian Book Industry Awards – and the Quarterly Essay on Safe Schools... Read more
Watch, Listen, Read

Watch
Straight Talk with Anthony Albanese
26 May 2022

Don’t Be Too Polite, Girls
24 May 2022

Read
Confronting Australia's coal conundrum
19 May 2022

Read
Communicating Consent
19 May 2022

Read
Speaking back to absences and absurdities
13 May 2022

Listen
Pill Pop
3 May 2022