Explore every episode of the podcast Queer Lit

If you have not read A Black Queer History of the United States yet, you are so lucky to have this fantastic book in your future! And lucky for me that this is also an excellent opportunity to speak to two dream guests: C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost speak about gender trouble in the Black queer archives, how Black and queer histories need to be thought together and why grounding oneself in community is part of what it means to survive.  

References:
C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost’s A Black Queer History of the United States (2026)
C. Riley Snorton’s Nobody is Supposed to Know: Black Sexuality on the Down Low (U of Minnesota Press, 2014)
C. Riley Snorton’s Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (U of Minnesota Press, 2017)
Darius Bost’s Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence (U of Chicago Press, 2019)
Cathy J. Cohen “Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics” (2014)
William Cathay/Cathay Williams
Phil Black
The Funmakers Ball
Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman
Erica R. Edwards
Marsha P. Johnson
Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR)
Combahee River Collective
National Black Justice Coalition
“Black Lesbian Thought” with Briona Simone Jones
@c.rileysnorton
dbost@uic.edu
@windycitybq
Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Neptune Frost
Jellicle Ball
Essex Hemphill’s Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry      

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Why do Black and queer history need to be thought of together? How are they sometimes separated?
2.      Darius speaks about the book having two parts. What is each about?
3.      Riley speaks about gender and sexual deviance as forms of survival or escape. What does this mean? Can you name an example?
4.      What does Darius say about the relationship between civil rights ideology and non-normative gender?
5.      Why is it important to speak about collectives as well as individuals when engaging with Black queer history?

Who designs the rules of inclusion? Kevin Guyan has given a lot of thought to this question in his excellent book Rainbow Trap, which thinks through the many categories that fall under the rainbow umbrella and how they might include, exclude, limit, and even harm the people they are supposed to benefit. Listen now to learn more about why our future might hold fewer boxes to tick and how we can break boundaries to get there.  

References: 
Kevin Guyan’s Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (2025)
Kevin Guyan’s Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action (2022)
https://kevinguyan.com/ 
@kevin.guyan on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kevin.guyan/)
kguyan on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kguyan/)
Gender Recognition Reform Bill
Gender Recognition Act
Kit Heyam
Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star – in particular, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences (1999)
Ian Hacking
Looping effect
Sara Ahmed – in particular, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012)
A Black Queer History of the United States (2026, C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost)
Gender and Sexuality Data Lab (https://gensexdatalab.com/)
Queer Data Showcase
Mystika Glamoor
Dean Spade’s Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (2011)  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is a rainbow trap? Have you ever been trapped in one?
2.      Kevin speaks about ‘the dark sides of being included’. What does this mean? Have you experienced this form of categorisation?
3.      What does Kevin think about in the chapter on health and fitness?
4.      How are labels multidirectional? What are ‘looping effects’ in this context?
5.      What is a box breaker? Are you one?

We’re all still here, still ready to love, and to build community with trans books! In this extremely fun conversation, Cat Fitzpatrick talks about her poetry, her work with Little Puss Press, and a person called Crabstick. If you are wondering how all these things can go together and if you want to hear a fantastic poet speak about her favourite lyric forms as well as her favourite forms of activism, this episode is for you.  

References:
Cat Fitzpatrick’s The Dinner Party (Seven Stories Press, 2026)
Little Puss Press
Cat Fitzpatrick’s The Call-Out
Cat Fitzpatrick’s Glamourpuss
Meanwhile, Elsewhere (edited by Cat Fitzpatrick and Casey Plett) 
https://www.catfitzpatrick.net/
@intermittentcat
Chiara Pellegrini
The Earl of Rochester
“A Letter from Artemesia in the Town to Chloe in the Country”
Richard Barnfield
Uxorious
Virgil
Aphra Behn
Gwen Aube’s Missed Connections with Tall Girls
Violet Allen’s Plastic, Prism, Void
Sybil Lamb’s I’ve Got a Time Bomb
Jeanne Thornton’s A/S/L
Shola von Reinhold’s Lote
Imogen Binnie’s Nevada
Sophia Dahlin’s Glove Money
Futurepoems
Joss Barton's Goodbye to a Dream Believed   

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Cat and I speak about several poetic forms in this episode. What is Cat’s take on poetic form and the patriarchy? What is yours?
2.      Which kinds of love do we speak about in the episode?
3.      Cat describes part of her writing process as “I hold on to my feelings until I can make use of them.” Can you relate to this?
4.      What does Cat mean when she talks about books as time capsules?
5.      How can literature help us build community and engage with trans rights?

If you want to know what Roxy wants, this episode is a great place to start. Diva’s fabulous editor in chief joins us for a chat about her lovely memoir What A Girl Wants, which is just as heartwarming, insightful and fun as the author herself. Roxy and I speak about femme invisibility, queer timelines, body image and lesbian breakups. Not one to be missed.  

References:
DIVA
Out and Wild
Zoe Berryman
Caitlin Moran
Dolly Alderton
Ann Bannon’s I Am A Woman (1959)
The Beebo Brinker Chronicles
Carol
Cate Blanchett
Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Roxy’s book regularly employs direct address of the reader. What does Roxy say about this? Why was this formal feature important for writing this book?
2.      Roxy and I speak about queered timelines. What do we suggest and what do you think about this topic?
3.      How does Roxy speak about approaching chronology and structure in memoir?  

The final episode of the Queer Forms and Pronouns series got a bit more personal than I expected. The incredible Teagan Bradway and I speak about misgendering ourselves, giving the gift of language to our loved ones and why not just the function but also the beauty of gender-nonconformity pronouns is politically and personally significant. We speak about my anxieties about it pronouns and how this plays out in different genres from speculative fiction to memoir. Teagan’s insights into narrative agency and pronominal shifts are incredibly helpful in taking one last deep dive into the world of pronouns.

This conversation is part of a miniseries that accompanies my book Queer Forms and Pronouns: Gender Nonconformity in Anglophone Literature (Oxford University Press, 2026). I hope you like hearing more from your host, but not to worry: we will be back to our usual format after this one.  

References:
Bradway, Teagan. "Queer Narrative Theory and the Relationality of Form." PMLA 136.5 (2021): 711-727.
Bradway, Teagan, and Elizabeth Freeman, eds. Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging, Form. Duke University Press, 2022.
Bradway, Teagan. "Introduction: Queer Metarelationality." differences 35.3 (2024): 1-13.
Bradway, Teagan. "Queer Formalism." The Palgrave Handbook of Feminist, Queer and Trans* Narrative Studies. Palgrave, 2025. 95-109.
https://teaganbradway.com/
Les Feinberg
Torrey Peters’ Stag Dance
Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot
Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood
Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer
Diane Watt
Jack Halberstam
Dana Luciano
Mel Y. Chen
Spivak pronouns (E/em/eir)
Isaac Fellman
Andrea Gibson
Hekanaho, Laura. "A thematic analysis of attitudes towards English nonbinary pronouns." Journal of Language and Sexuality 11.2 (2022): 190-216.
Mattheis, Lena. "Nonbinary Narration." The Palgrave Handbook of Feminist, Queer and Trans* Narrative Studies. Palgrave, 2025. 25-39.
Vera Nuenning
Corinna Assmann    

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What does narrative agency have to do with pronouns? How might narrative point of view affect pronouns?
2.      Why do we discuss genre? What could the implications of discussing pronouns in speculative fiction be?
3.      How can ‘it’ pronouns allow us to think about gender, personhood and humanness?
4.      What are Spivak pronouns? You may want to look this up as we only mention them very briefly.
5.      What do Lena and Teagan think about mispronouning?
6.      Why do we speak about pronouns as a gift that is not always easy to give? How do you feel about sharing your pronouns or learning someone else’s?  

The fantastic Jas Morgan is back for a conversation about pronouns in Two-Spirit literature! We think about how kinship is reflected in language, what role pronouns take on in translation and how they can easily be misunderstood, especially when working across cultures and languages. Our conversation is based on a dialogic chapter of Queer Forms and Pronouns, which I co-wrote with Kai Minosh Pyle.

This conversation is part of a miniseries that accompanies my book Queer Forms and Pronouns: Gender Nonconformity in Anglophone Literature (Oxford University Press, 2026). I hope you like hearing more from your host, but not to worry: we will be back to our usual format in just a few weeks.

References:
Kai Minosh Pyle
Jas Morgan’s “My Pronouns are Kiy/Kin”
https://web.archive.org/web/20210416065231/https://aabitagiizhig.com/2016/05/13/red-rising-my-pronouns-are-kiy-kin/
Jas Morgan’s nîtisânak
Riot Grrrl
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Wahkohtowin
Joshua Whitehead’s “A Queer Geography of Woundings”
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Lambda Literary Awards
Kin (web series)
Justin Ducharme
Aalayna
Ta’Kaiya Blaney
https://jasmorgan.com/2020/10/25/sewing-circle-kin-web-series/
@notvanishing (IG)  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Why might pronouns work differently in Two-Spirit literature?
2.      What do pronouns have to do with kinship?
3.      How are pronouns connected to animacy?
4.      We speak about pronouns in translation between languages that attach gendered notions to them or not. How might this affect communication? Are pronouns gendered in your favourite language?
5.      What does Jas mean by ‘I am not a metaphor’?

Come along for a deep dive into mixed pronouns in queer, trans and nonbinary narratives with none other than Sue Lanser, your favourite narratologist’s favourite narratologist. Sue and I talk about why we might need to rethink the concept of gender disguise narratives, where we find mixed pronouns in literary histories and why mixed pronouns often become sensual in literature. My favourite bit: Sue asks me about my personal hero, the Grinch.

This conversation is part of a miniseries that accompanies my book Queer Forms and Pronouns: Gender Nonconformity in Anglophone Literature (Oxford University Press, 2026). I hope you like hearing more from your host, but not to worry: we will be back to our usual format in just a few weeks.    

References
Sue Lanser’s The Sexuality of History
Sue Lanser’s Narrative Theory Unbound
Sue Lanser’s “Trans-forming Narratology” Narrative 32.2 (2024)
Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body
Le Roman de Silence
Michel de Montaigne’s Journal de Voyage
Margaret Cavendish’s Assaulted and Pursued Chastity
Lyly’s Galatea
Chevalièr(e) d’Éon
Alex Myers’ Revolutionary
Deborah Samson
Jenny Fran Davis’ Dykette
Isaac Fellman’s Dead Collections
Spiel, Katta, Os Keyes, and Pınar Barlas. 2019. ‘Patching Gender: Non-Binary Utopias in HCI’. Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 2, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3310425.
The Grinch
Dr Seuss
Jim Carrey
Benedict Cumberbatch
Les Feinberg
Maggie Nelson
Harry Dodge
Jen Manion
Dean Spade      

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What role does narrative agency play in the difference between external and intrinsic pronoun ascription?
2.      Why does Susan suggest that we need to revisit Shakespeare’s and other’s gender disguise narratives?
3.      Susan mentions how characters that are perceived as masculine but use she/her are much more frequently ridiculed than characters viewed as feminine who use he/him. Why do you think that is?
4.      How has feminism expanded what ‘she/her’ can mean?
5.      How does mixing pronouns do similar or different work from singular they?
6.      Why does the Grinch, according to Lena, have big they energy?

It was an incredible honour to have THE Susan Stryker join me for a chat about ambiguous pronouns, trans literature and linguistic creativity. Susan’s wealth of knowledge on pronouns across languages and literary history was incredibly enriching and allowed me to speak about some of my favourite examples of ambiguous pronoun use in literature.

This conversation is part of a miniseries that accompanies my book Queer Forms and Pronouns: Gender Nonconformity in Anglophone Literature (Oxford University Press, 2026). I hope you like hearing more from your host, but not to worry: we will be back to our usual format in just a few weeks.  

References:
Susan Stryker’s “My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix”
Susan Stryker’s Transgender History
Susan Stryker, Stephen Wittle, Aren Aizura (eds) The Transgender Studies Reader
Susan Stryker’s Changing Gender: The History and Future of a Concept (August 2026)
Sara Taylor’s The Lauras
Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s The Sleeping Hermaphrodite (1620)
Teagan Bradway
Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer (2019)
Lal Zimman
Rivers Solomon
Aphra Behn’s “To The Fair Clorinda” and “The Widow Ranter”
Thomas(ine) Hall
Nathaniel Bacon
Mel Y. Chen
Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Andrea Gibson’s “Your Life”  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Which pronouns are ambiguous when it comes to gender in English? Which ones are ambiguous in your first or favourite language?
2.      What creates ambiguity when we use pronouns? How might this ambiguity be productive?
3.      Susan explains why gendered pronouns in English function in an unusual way compared to other languages. What is something new you learned about this?
4.      We speak about why literature can teach us something about pronoun use that we might overlook when focusing on grammar. What is that?
5.      Can you name one of the examples of ambiguous pronoun use in literature we discuss?      

Welcome to a miniseries about gender nonconformity pronouns in literature! In this episode, the amazing linguist Laura Paterson asks me many clever questions about singular they in literature. We talk about the function of pronouns, common misunderstanding about singular they, and neutral versus gender-nonconforming use of this fantastic third person pronoun. Whether you would like reading recommendations (Virginia Woolf, Lamya H, Rae Spoon…) or some insight into what singular they can do in creative and academic writing, this episode might have some answers – or questions – for you.  

References

Lena Mattheis’ Queer Forms and Pronouns: Gender Nonconformity in Anglophone Literature (Oxford University Press, 2026)
Laura Paterson (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Pronouns (Routledge, 2023)
Anna Livia
Lamya H’s Hijab Butch Blues (2023)
Rae Spoon’s Green Glass Ghosts (2021)
Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body (1992)
Anne Garréta’s Sphinx (1986)
Charlie Josephine’s I, Joan (2022)
The Globe
https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/identity-in-i-joan/
Kit Heyam
Laura Paterson and Georgina Turner (eds) Approaches to Discourses of Marriage (Routledge, 2024)
Lal Zimman  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.     What is a pronoun?
2.     How does Lena define gender-nonconformity pronouns?
3.     Why is it relevant whether a narrator comments on pronoun use or not? Which examples does Lena provide?
4.     Which literary texts do Laura and Lena mention? Which one would you like to read and why?
5.     What do Laura and Lena discuss about pronouns in academic writing? Do you have an established practice for this?

What is queer food, you ask? Let’s find out! Alex Ketchum and Megan Elias tell me all about the connections between gender and food, cooking and sexuality, and recipes and community. The amazing book Queers at the Table is a product of the queer food conference Alex and Megan ran in 2024 (returning in 2026!) and consists of essays, stories, comics and endlessly inspiring reflections on queer cooking and intellectual inquiry. Lesbian chefs, feminist cafes, queer community cookouts – this episode has them all.  

References:
Queers at the Table (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025)
Alex Ketchum’s Ingredients for Revolution: A History of American Feminist Restaurants, Cafes, and Coffeehouses (Concordia UP, 2022)
https://press.library.concordia.ca/projects/ingredients-for-revolution (open access)
Megan Elias’ Food on the Page (Penn Press, 2017)
Queer Food Conference
https://www.queerfoodconference.com/
@queerfoodconference
Alex Ketchum’s How to Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences (Microcosm, 2026)
https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/63461
Alex Ketchum’s Digital Queers and High Tech Gays (MIT Press, 2027)
@dr.alexketchum
http://alexketchum.ca
Alex Ketchum’s Engage in Public Scholarship!: A Guidebook on Feminist and Accessible Communication (Concordia Uni Press, 2022)
https://press.library.concordia.ca/projects/engage-in-public-scholarship (open access)
https://www.justfeministtechandscholarshiplab.com/
Greggor Mattson
Prism Comics
Queer Food Foundation
The Female Glaze
@thefemaleglaze
The Nonbinarian Bookstore
https://thenonbinarian.gay/
Bishakh Som’s Spellbound
Cait McKinney’s Information Activism: A Queer History of Lesbian Media Technologies
The Ripped Bodice
Casey McQuiston’s The Pairing  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      How do Megan and Alex define queer food?
2.      Megan thinks about what ‘not queer food’ might be and whether we would want to define this. What is your opinion? Is there ‘straight’ food?
3.      How is gender connected to food? Were you surprised by anything we mention?
4.      What connections do Megan and Alex draw between sexuality and food?
5.      Alex and Megan speak a lot about community. Can you name two examples of how community makes food queer?
6.      How might food be linked to queer knowledge production?

The incredible author Lauren J. Joseph joins me to talk about her new book Lean Cat, Savage Cat – out on 26 February 2026. Lauren talks about the genre-bending ambiguity of the novel, about characters that have followed her from the stage to the page, and about writing across languages. We touch on the intricacies of first-person narration, but also on what it’s like to write a novel versus writing a PhD.  

References:
Lauren J. Joseph’s Lean Cat, Savage Cat (2026)
Lauren J. Joseph’s At Certain Points We Touch (2022)
Ben Robbins
Alexander Geist
David Bowie
Bryan Ferry
Morrissey
Hildegard von Bingen
Marty Supreme
Timothée Chalamet
Essen
Dortmund
Karstadt
KaDeWe
Romy Haag
Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy: Low, Heroes, Lodger
Narcissus and Echo
Céleste Albaret
Proust
American Psycho
Pedro Lemebel’s My Tender Matador
Jean Genet

From Christopher Isherwood to Djuna Barnes, some of the most prolific queer writers of the 20th century wrote in exile. Ben Robbins joins me to explain how and why queer writers connected with each other in exile and how (in)voluntary movement shaped their stories. Ben shares some surprising encounters from the archives and paints a picture of some of the locations of queer exile: Berlin, Tangier and Capri.  

References:
Networked Narratives: Queer Exile Literature 1900-1969
Funded by the Austrian Science Fund/FWF (Project DOI: 10.55776/P35199)
  https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/networkednarratives/
Ben Robbins’ “‘Marriages ought to be secret’: Queer Marriages of Convenience and the Exile Narrative” JAAAS: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, Dec. 2023, pp. 100–122, https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v5i1.173.
Networks of Anglophone LGBTQ+ Exile Writers
http://queerexilelit.uibk.ac.at/ Robbins, Ben, and Ralph J. Poole. "Introduction: Queer Ruralisms." AmLit – American Literatures 4.2 (2024): 4-21.
Ben Robbins’ Faulkner's Hollywood Novels: Women between Page and Screen (University of Virginia Press 2024) https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5855/
Queer Second Cities
Maria Sulimma
Ben Robbins’ “Christopher Isherwood in Exile” 
https://www.huntington.org/verso/christopher-isherwood-exile
Harry Ransom Center
Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman)
Oscar Wilde
W. Somerset Maugham
E.F. Benson
John Ellingham Brooks
Romaine Brooks
John Ellerman
Robert McAlmon
Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood
Natalie Barney
Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin
Stephen Spender’s The Temple
Jane Bowles’ Two Serious Ladies
W.H. Auden
Patricia Highsmith
Allen Ginsberg
Claude McKay
Thornton Wilder
Ben Robbins. "Space, Sexuality, and Thornton Wilder's Villa Rhabani." Thornton Wilder Journal 5:1, November 2024, pp. 99-119. DOI: 10.5325/thorntonwilderj.5.1.0099
 https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/thornton-wilder/article-abstract/5/1/99/392187/Space-Sexuality-and-Thornton-Wilder-s-Villa?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Open access: https://ulb-dok.uibk.ac.at/urn/urn:nbn:at:at-ubi:3-40689
William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch
Alfred Chester’s Looking for Genet: Literary Essays and Reviews
Susan Sontag
Gore Vidal
Henry James
Truman Capote  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      How does Ben define ‘exile’? How is this similar to and different from ‘expat’?
2.      How does exile relate to class status and financial means?
3.      Why are queer networks so important in this context?
4.      What does Ben say about exile and (involuntary) movement affecting narrative form?
5.      How do you find out where you can safely travel?

Time for a cross-over! I had the absolute pleasure on being invited to join the Amplified network and appear on their superb podcast. Here is our episode and Amplified's show notes:

"Amplified is an audio blog series about the sounds of scholarship from our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. This month on Amplified, Stacey Copeland and Hannah McGregor are joined by Lena Mattheis to kick off a brand new series featuring the latest additions to our sustained cohort of podcasters. Lena is the creator and host of Queer Lit, a podcast about LGBTQIA2S+* literature and culture. In this conversation, we reflect on podcasting as a tool for community building and queer scholarly practice, tracing how Queer Lit emerged from Lena's teaching practice and a commitment to accessible feminist and queer knowledge creation."

What is the queerest thing you did this year? Listen to the festive special to find out how queer our guests and listeners made 2025!

References:
Liz Breslin
How To Read podcast
https://www.howtoreadpodcast.com/elaine-auyoung-one-sided-relationships/
Queer Forms and Pronouns: Gender Nonconformity in Anglophone Literature (OUP, March 2026)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/queer-forms-and-pronouns-9780198974116?q=lena%20mattheis&lang=en&cc=gb
Susan Stryker
Louise Siddons’ Good Pictures Are A Strong Weapon
https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517910730/good-pictures-are-a-strong-weapon/
Category is Books (Glasgow)
Lighthouse Books (Edinburgh)
The Bookish Type (Leeds)
Kit Heyam
Royal Vauxhall Tavern
All Of Us Strangers
Nick Cherryman
European Gay Ski Week
Oliver Slate-Green’s The Way Blood Travels
Leah Davidson
Listenqueer.co.uk
Out and Wild
Leilah King
Coast is Queer
Jack Gieseking
Our Dyke Histories podcast
Julie Enszer
Lesbian Lives 
Sinister Wisdom
The Essential Poems of Pat Parker (The 87 Press)
Caro de Robertis’ The Palace of Eros
Joelle Taylor’s Maryville
Alison Bechdel’s Spent
Allan Johnson 
https://thisisallan.medium.com/elf-and-safety-2b061323dbc1
Flora Johnson’s Christopher Popinkins

What is the queerest thing you did this year? Listen to the festive special to find out how queer our guests and listeners made 2025!  

References:
Happiest Season
Kristen Stewart
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Joe Jukes
https://www.hiss.sydney/
Virginia Gay’s Cyrano
Qtopia Sydney
Queer Britain
@guildfordgaybookclub New House Art Space (Guildford) Juno Dawson’s Stay Another Day Layla McCay’s The Queer Bookshelf: A Reader’s Guide (June 2026) Libro.fm Pillion Arzner @Arznercinema  

Share the queerest thing you did this year by 6 December to be featured on the end-of-year special and for the chance to win a special gift (if you are based in the UK). Send an email or voice recording to queerlitpodcast@gmail.com by 6 December.

I can't wait to hear from you!

Medusa, Medea, Artemis… we’ve all heard their stories before but what do they sound like when not told by (or centred on) men? Mara Gold, the sapphic scholar, is here to tell us all about these figures and about how there is always more than one side to a story and more than one reading to a myth. Come for the lesbian legends, stay for the witty witches and follow us @queerlitpodcast and @sapphic_scholar.  

References

Mara Gold’s Ancient Myths and Legends Without Men (2025)
Mara Gold’s “Rebels Against the Tyranny of Men’: Women Performing Greek Comedy in Early Twentieth-Century Britain” in Women Creating Classics (2025)
 https://mara-gold.com/
@sapphic_scholar
Beyond the Binary Pitt Rivers Museum
https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/beyond-the-binary
Ashmolean Museum
Rebellious Bodies audio tour 
https://app.smartify.org/en-GB/tours/ashmolean-rebellious-bodies-tour?utm_campaign=ashmoleansmartifywebpage&utm_medium=webpagelink&utm_source=ashmoleanwebsite&utm_content=rebelliousbodiestour
Smartify
Hélène Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975)
Femme fatale
Gorgons
Apotropaic figure
Athena
Hera
Natalie Haynes’ Stone Blind
Madeleine Miller’s Circe
Rosie Hewlett
Pat Barker
Madeleine Miller’s Circe
Sirens
Odyssey
Durham Castle
Hans Christian Andersen
Selkie
Demeter
Penelope
Medea
Maenad
Dionysus
Bacchus
True Blood
Amazon
Atalanta
Nataly Barney
Lesbos-en-Seine
Artemis
Double Slice
https://doubleslice.studio/
Actaeon
Callisto
Zeus
Aphrodite
Jason
Argonauts
Glauce
Suranne Jones
Doctor Foster
Gentleman Jack
Children of Srikandi (2012)
Hector and Hephaestus
Radical Book Fair
Lighthouse Books Edinburgh
The Bookish Type
Caper bookshop
The Magicians
Persephone
Cassandra  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is sapphism?
2.      What is classical reception? How is this relevant to Mara’s work?
3.      What are the archetypes that Mara uses to structure the book? Which one are you most interested in and why?
4.      What does Mara say about Srikandi and Srikandi’s role in LGBTQIA+ activism in Indonesia?
5.      How can we draw on ancient myths for queer activism today? What does Mara say about this? What are your thoughts?
6.      Do you have a favourite figure from mythology or legends?  

Are you ready to descend into the weird world of queer Gothic writing, spooky sexology, and gay ghouls? Brontë Schiltz is an expert on all of these and so much more. We speak about the televisual Gothic and about several of Brontë’s favourite Victorian writers, including masc heartthrob Vernon Lee. If you’re into fun facts about blood transfusions and half-human, half-snake main characters, this episode is for you.  

References:
Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies
Vernon Lee (1856-1935)
Ali Smith
Sarah Waters
Televisual gothic
A Ghost Story For Christmas
M.R. James
“The Dead Room”
Mark Gatiss
The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales
Chris Baldick
Nigel Kneale
Matthew Lewis’ The Monk
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’ Manor
Sexology
“Plain Reasons Against Sodomy”
Horace Walpole
John Addington Symonds
Dracula
George Haggerty’s Queer Gothic
John Singer Sargent
Clementina Anstruther-Thomson
Affect studies
Vernon Lee’s Hauntings
“A Wicked Voice”
“Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”
Megan Milks
Ali Smith’s Hotel World
Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies
The Horse Hospital 
https://www.thehorsehospital.com/events/miskatonic-televisualgothic  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is the Gothic? What did you know about the Gothic before listening and what did you learn from Brontë?
2.      How is the Gothic queer?
3.      Why is the Victorian period an interesting time to look at queerness?
4.      How does Brontë speak about queerness in relation to illness?
5.      What is your favourite spooky story?          

Are you ready to become a showgirl? Poet, scholar, and Swifty extraordinaire Stephanie Burt joins me to talk about Taylor Swift’s musical genius, queer fandom and relationship to femininity. There was simply too much to squeeze into one episode, so make sure to listen to part one first and hear all about the Gaylors, before switching to part two, to learn about Taylor's relationship to femininity, class and race. Stephanie will also tell you why she thought the “You Need To Calm Down” video was a big mistake…

Follow Stephanie and myself at @notquitehydepark and @queerlitpodcast for even more content!  

References
Stephanie Burt’s We Are Mermaids (Greywolf Press, 2022)
Stephanie Burt’s Super Gay Poems (2025)
Stephanie Burt’s Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift (Basic Books, 2025)
Stephanie Burt’s “Prayer for Werewolves”
Poetry Unbound
John Donne
Katherine Philips
Geoffrey Chaucer
Walt Whitman
Charlotte Mew
Sarah Records
Heavenly
Tender Trap
Blueboy
Ella Darling
Motown
Carole King
Dolly Parton
“You Belong With Me”
Red
Reputation
Miss Americana (2020)
Lover
Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road
Gaylorism
Gaylors and Hetlors
“When Emma Falls in Love”
“All Too Well”
Joe Jonas
Taylor Lautner
Jake Gyllenhaal
“Back to December”
John Mayer
The Life of a Show Girl
Elizabeth Taylor
Katharine Hepburn
Ophelia Hamlet
Julia Serano
Frozen
Mononormativity
Evermore
“Tis The Damn Season”
The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection
“Christmases When You Were Mine”
Crass
Grace Petrie
Taylearning podcast
“Clara Bow”
Britney Spears
Miley Cyrus
“You Need to Come Down”
Adeem the Artist
Journey to Fearless
Lara Heimert
@notquitehydepark
Rachel Gold’s In the Silences
Imogen Binnie’s Nevada
X-Men Gold 30
D.A. Powell
Team Dresch’s Captain My Captain
Slater Kinney
Heartbreak High
Sex Education
Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      How does Stephanie speak about the relationship between poetry, lyrics and music? Where does this become relevant in Taylor Swift’s work?
2.      What does the term ‘Gaylor’ refer to and why are there so many of them?
3.      We speak about sapphic forms in this episode. What makes a form sapphic for you?
4.      What is feminophobia and why could being femme be read as giving up power? How does this relate to trans femininity?
5.      What does Stephanie suggest about the representation of class in the “You Need To Calm Down” video?
6.      Why does Stephanie stress that Taylor knows that she is white? How does Stephanie describe Taylor’s engagement with race and the music of Black women?
7.      Does Taylor’s music speak to you? Why or why not?

Are you ready to become a showgirl? Poet, scholar, and Swifty extraordinaire Stephanie Burt joins me to talk about Taylor Swift’s musical genius, queer fandom and relationship to femininity. There was simply too much to squeeze into one episode, so make sure to listen to part one first and hear all about the Gaylors, before switching to part two, to learn about Taylor;s relationship to femininity, class and race. Stephanie will also tell you why she thought the “You Need To Calm Down” video was a big mistake…

Follow Stephanie and myself at @notquitehydepark and @queerlitpodcast for even more content!  

References
Stephanie Burt’s We Are Mermaids (Greywolf Press, 2022)
Stephanie Burt’s Super Gay Poems (2025)
Stephanie Burt’s Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift (Basic Books, 2025)
Stephanie Burt’s “Prayer for Werewolves”
Poetry Unbound
John Donne
Katherine Philips
Geoffrey Chaucer
Walt Whitman
Charlotte Mew
Sarah Records
Heavenly
Tender Trap
Blueboy
Ella Darling
Motown
Carole King
Dolly Parton
“You Belong With Me”
Red
Reputation
Miss Americana (2020)
Lover
Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road
Gaylorism
Gaylors and Hetlors
“When Emma Falls in Love”
“All Too Well”
Joe Jonas
Taylor Lautner
Jake Gyllenhaal
“Back to December”
John Mayer
The Life of a Show Girl
Elizabeth Taylor
Katharine Hepburn
Ophelia Hamlet
Julia Serano
Frozen
Mononormativity
Evermore
“Tis The Damn Season”
The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection
“Christmases When You Were Mine”
Crass
Grace Petrie
Taylearning podcast
“Clara Bow”
Britney Spears
Miley Cyrus
“You Need to Come Down”
Adeem the Artist
Journey to Fearless
Lara Heimert
@notquitehydepark
Rachel Gold’s In the Silences
Imogen Binnie’s Nevada
X-Men Gold 30
D.A. Powell
Team Dresch’s Captain My Captain
Slater Kinney
Heartbreak High
Sex Education
Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      How does Stephanie speak about the relationship between poetry, lyrics and music? Where does this become relevant in Taylor Swift’s work?
2.      What does the term ‘Gaylor’ refer to and why are there so many of them?
3.      We speak about sapphic forms in this episode. What makes a form sapphic for you?
4.      What is feminophobia and why could being femme be read as giving up power? How does this relate to trans femininity?
5.      What does Stephanie suggest about the representation of class in the “You Need To Calm Down” video?
6.      Why does Stephanie stress that Taylor knows that she is white? How does Stephanie describe Taylor’s engagement with race and the music of Black women?
7.      Does Taylor’s music speak to you? Why or why not?

Our favourite feminist killjoy is back! Sara Ahmed joins me to talk about her brand-new book No Is Not A Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining. In her first ever (how special are we) public conversation about the book, Sara speaks about becoming a feminist ear and a complaint collector, sharing stories of her own complaints as well as those shared with her in community. Explaining how the power of complaining lies in creativity and collectivity, Sara shows why saying no is a powerful queer method.  

References:
Sarah Ahmed’s No Is Not A Lonely Utterance (Allen Lane, 2025)
Sarah Ahmed’s The Feminist Killjoy Handbook (Penguin, 2023)
Sarah Ahmed’s Complaint! (Duke, 2021)
Sarah Ahmed’s What’s the Use (Duke, 2019)
Sarah Ahmed’s On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Duke, 2012)
Onomatopoeia
Jean Porcelli
Race Relations Amendment Act
CARD Complaint Against Racial Discrimination
Kennetta Hammond Perry’s London is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race (2018)
 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/london-is-the-place-for-me-9780190909949?cc=gb&lang=en&
Heather Love’s Feeling Backward
Chelsea Watego’s “Always Bet On Black (Power)” (2021)
https://meanjin.com.au/essays/always-bet-on-black-power/  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is a feminist ear? How might you become one?
2.      We speak about the role of energy in complaining. Where can energy come from or disappear to? To quote Sara: ‘puff, puff’
3.      How does Sara define institutional fatalism and why might it be an illusion?
4.      What makes complaint a queer method?
5.      This is a question from Sara’s book: What is the first complaint you remember making? How do you feel about it now?

How many times have you watched the sweaty lesbian fever dream that is Love Lies Bleeding? As you might be able to guess from this episode, Michelle Devereaux and I have stopped counting. Michelle is a feminist film-philosophy expert who joins me to talk about Rose Glass’s super queer neo noir, the interplay of genre conventions and gender dynamics, and all the fun intertexts and easter eggs that we found in Love Lies Bleeding. Whether you’re into bodybuilding and gender transgression or lesbian romance against all odds, this episode is for you.  

References
Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Devereaux, Michelle. "Suspicious Minds and Dead Bodies: Queer Romance and Skepticism in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding." Film Quarterly 78.2 (2024): 24-32.
Devereaux, Michelle. The Stillness of Solitude: Romanticism and Contemporary American Independent Film. Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Devereaux, Michelle.“‘A lot of people are creative’: Process, Perfectionism and the Everyday Sublime in Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up and First Cow”. Kim Wilkins and Bruce Isaacs, eds. A24: Culture, Aesthetics, Identity. Edinburgh University Press, 2026 (expected).
Devereaux, Michelle.“Inherited Trauma, Postcolonial Scepticism and the Harmony of Voice in Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale”. Film-Philosophy and Australian Cinema. Saige Walton and Matilda Mroz, eds. Edinburgh University Press, 2026 (expected).
Devereaux, Michelle and Lash, Dominic (eds.). Love, Desire and Stanley Cavell. London: Routledge, 2026 (expected).
MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture: www.maifeminism.com
Russian Doll
Sofia Coppola
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Harvard University Press, 1981.
Cavell, Stanley. Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. Harvard University Press, 1996.
Comedies of Remarriage
Screwball Comedy
Out and Wild
Sleater-Kinney
Bristol Butch Bar
Lindner, Katharina. Film Bodies: Queer Feminist Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Bound (1996)
The Incredible Hulk
Kristen Stewart 
Twilight
Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985)
Bev Francis David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) and Lost Highway (1997)
Winkie’s Diner
Lauren Berlant’s epistemic frenzy
Teresa de Lauretis 
michelledevereaux@bsky.social
Instagram: @michelleldevereaux
Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up (2022)
Michelle Williams
Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1996)
Tilda Swinton
Sean Bean  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:
1.      What is Love Lies Bleeding about and why does Michelle suggest it might be more about gender than about sexuality?
2.      How does Michelle describe Lindner’s ‘space of transgender potential’? Can you think of an example for this?
3.      Which genres does Michelle mention to discuss and describe Love Lies Bleeding? How are these genres queered in the film?
4.      What role does the setting play in the film? How might this relate to the ‘space of transgender potential’?
5.      What is your favourite lesbian and/or trans film and why?

If you can’t find me, I’m probably still browsing shelves of queer joy at Lighthouse, Edinburgh’s superb radical bookshop. The delightful owner Mairi Oliver took some time to chat with me about the long history of radical and queer bookshops that have come before and exist alongside this absolute gem of a queer space. We speak about queer spaces changing hands and transforming, rather than disappearing, about the magic of queer and trans book events, and about why radical booksellers are so important for local community.  

References:
Word Power
Elaine Henry
Constant Reader Bookshop
Lavender Menace
West & Wilde
Sigrid Nielson
Bob Orr J
une Thomas’s A Place of One’s Own
Jane Cholmeley’s A Bookshop of One’s Own
Silver Moon Bookshop
James Ley’s Love Song To Lavender Menace
Naomi Klein
Sara Ahmed
Radical Book Fair
Category is Books (Glasgow)
Gay’s The Word (London)
Housmans (London)
Five Leaves (Nottingham)
Alliance of Radical Booksellers 
https://www.radicalbooksellers.co.uk/
Bread and Roses Award
Jake Hall’s Shoulder to Shoulder: A Queer History of Solidarity, Coalition and Chaos
N.S. Nuseibeh’s Namesake  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Mairi speaks about how Lighthouse builds on a lineage of queer spaces. How do you feel about queer spaces transforming versus disappearing?
2.      In this context, we also speak about the higher expectations for queer spaces. Have you experienced this? Do you think queer spaces should be held to a higher standard? What is the effect of this?
3.      When we speak about the relationship between readers, booksellers and authors, Mairi makes some interesting points about how the role of writers is changing. What struck you as particularly important here?
4.      Mairi ends the episode with a note on the urgency with which we need to address current political discussions. How can books and bookshops help us do this?

What makes Hong Kong queer? Alvin K. Wong joins me to speak about how queer and decolonial thought can help us better understand Hong Kong and its relation to the Sinophone world, to Eurocentric queer theory, and to global protest culture. Alvin speaks about queer and trans photography, films and novels from Hong Kong and sprinkles in some excellent theory reading recommendations. Listen now to learn more about Hong Kong and why it is such a frequent site of (unruly) comparison.  

References:
Wong, Alvin. Unruly Comparison: Queerness, Hong Kong, and the Sinophone (Duke UP, 2025)
Wong, Alvin. “Transgenderism as a Heuristic Device: On the Cross-historical and Transnational Adaptations of the Legend of the White Snake,” in Transgender China, ed. Howard Chiang (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 127-158.
https://complit.hku.hk/index.php/faculty/alvin-wong/
akhwong@hku.hk
Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures
Society of Sinophone Studies
Michel Foucault
Judith Butler
Rey Chow
Ackbar Abbas
Umbrella Movement in 2014
Milton Friedman
Roderick Ferguson
José Esteban Muñoz
Queer of colour critique
Gayatri Gopinath’s Impossible Desires (Duke UP, 2005) and Unruly Visions (Duke UP, 2018)
Emily Apter’s The Translation Zone (Princeton UP, 2006)
Nelson Tang Chak-man’s Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been? (2019-20)
Ann Stoler
Jacques Derrida
Anjali Arondekar
Wong Bik-wan’s Lienü tu 烈女圖 (Portraits of martyred women, 1999)
Ma Ka Fai’s Long tou feng wei 龍頭鳳尾 (Once Upon A Time in Hong Kong, 2016)
Lisa Lowe
Scud
Mak Yan Yan’s Butterfly Jun Li’s Tracey (2018)
W v. Registrar of Marriages
A Woman is A Woman
Mimi Wong
Chen Ran’s A Private Life  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What happened on 1 July 1997? Why was 2019 a central year in Hong Kong’s history?
2.      Why is Hong Kong such a frequent site of comparison? What makes Hong Kong (seem) exceptional?
3.      What does Alvin observe about Eurocentrism in queer studies? Which other power dynamics does he put this in relation with?
4.      Alvin speaks about juxtaposing different types of texts. What does he juxtapose and why?
5.      Several of Alvin’s reading recommendations have been published in translation. How often do you read translated texts?  

You know I love a queer bookshop and this Glaswegian dream of a queer space is absolutely delightful. Bug and Fin started Category is Books in 2018 to create the kind of space they were craving in their own neighbourhood. As the name promises, Category is Books has some exquisite shelving categories: from ‘Dyke Aching’ to ‘Trans Lit’ to the extensive poetry and theory sections, Bug and Fin show off their excellent taste on their shelves. In the recording, you can hear just how popular the shop is and how many people from near and far love to stop by for a browse and a chat. I’m telling you: this is a real treasure.  

References:
Dr Eamon McCarthy (new favourtite person) 
Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities
https://www.sgsah.ac.uk/
Section 28
Kelly Gardiner
Adrian’s Bar
Pluto Q Community Reading Room
https://www.plutoq.com/
Hazel Jane Plante’s Little Blue Encyclopedia
Sam Szabo’s Enlightened Transexual Comix
Shola von Reinhold’s Lote  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Why do we need specialist bookshops? Why did Bug and Fin want to open one?
2.      Why do Bug and Fin mention Section 28? Please look this term up if you are not familiar.
3.      What is your favourite category, section or genre in a bookshop?
4.      Why should you check Category is Books’ opening times before you go on your own queer pilgrimage there?  

What do transitions have to do with the nation state? More than you think! Ava Kim joins me to speak about how conceptions of gender are deeply (and problematically) entwined with the nation. Ava speaks about powerful examples of transition narratives from Chile, Vietnam and Argentina to illustrate this and gives us a sneak peek into her forthcoming book on trans genre.  

References:
Ava Kim’s Still / Life: Trans Genre and the Politics of Anti-Development (forthcoming)
Ava Kim’s “The Future is Child’s Play” GLQ (2025)
Davy Knittle
Mellon Foundation
Christoph Hanssmann
Stem the Tide: Trans Liberation in an Age of Fascism
Travesti
Nyke Slawik
Lucía Puenzo’s XXY (2007)
Marlene Wayar
Mauro Cabral Grinspan
Winnicott’s space of play
Paz Errázuriz
Gina Apostol’s Insurecto
Jessica Hagedorn’s Dream Jungle and Dogeaters
Trans subterfuge
Balangiga
Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman/ Una Mujer Fantástica  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Are you familiar with the term travesti? Please look it up and find a helpful definition.
2.      Which forms of transition does Ava talk about? How do they relate to one another?
3.      In how far is transition a narrative form? What does this have to do with the nation as a form?
4.      How does Ava define trans subterfuge?
5.      What are some of the connections between nation and gender Ava and I speak about? Can you think of others? Have you ever been affected by any of them?

Coming to you live from the Spoken Word stage at Out and Wild, the UK’s biggest festival for lesbian, bi, trans and queer women and those who are non-binary! This conversation with the delightful Leilah King has everything you could hope for: laughing, rhyming, swooning, and a whole lot of poetry reading. Tune in to hear Leilah speak about gender nonconformity in football, her journey as a neurodivergent performance poet, and how being half-Iranian affects her experience as a queer woman.

CW: mental health, manic state, gendered violence  

References:
Midnight Picnics in Tehran (2019)
We Are Hungry for Androgyny (2023)
Polari Press
Mary Oliver
Sam Kerr
Audre Lorde’s Zami
Travis Alabanza
John Steinbeck’s East of Eden
The Grapes of Wrath
Charles Bukowski
Ivan Coyote’s The Tomboy Survival Guide
James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room
John Betjeman
Philip Larkin
Soft Butch
Time of the Month
Gay on Wye  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Leilah reflects on being a writer as well as a performer. How does performance affect her writing?
2.      What was Leilah’s open mic night called and why did she set it up?
3.      Who are some of the writers that have inspired Leilah? Who inspires you?
4.      Leilah speaks about her intersecting experiences of being queer, neurodivergent and half-Iranian. How does your queerness relate to other parts of your identity?  

Come along on this deep dive into Alison Bechdel’s new autofictional comic novel Spent, that will give you everything from Edward Gorey Easter eggs to Harriet the Spy content. Alison teaches me things about myself (I’m a bottom-up thinker. Who knew!) and reflects on what Alison, the character, learns from finally meeting the much beloved Dykes to Watch Out For on the page. Whether you are a fan of goats, wood chopping, reality TV or Virginia Woolf – this episode has something for every kind of anti-capitalist dyke.  

References:
Alison Bechel’s The Secret to Superhuman Strength
Alison Bechel’s Fun Home
Alison Bechel’s Dykes to Watch Out For
Carmen Maria Machado
Karl Marx’s Das Kapital
The Guilty Feminist podcast
Queer Eye
Tidying Up with Marie Kondo
Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse
Nicole Coenen
Grant Wood’s American Gothic
Edward Gorey’s The Unstrung Harp
The Gashlycrumb Tinies T
his Queer Book Saved My Life
Jonathan Cape
Foyles
https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/cape-graphic-novels-mini-con
Anna Trench’s Florrie
Louise Fitzhugh’s Harriet the Spy  

Questions you should be able to respond to:

1.      What are some of Alison Bechdel’s most well-known texts?
2.      How does Alison reflect on intergenerational queer community?
3.      In a lesbian version of Queer Eye, what would the five lesbians’ areas of expertise be?
4.      If you could fictionalise a detail of your life, what would you invent for yourself?

The beauty of trans life is that it flourishes in unexpected spaces. This fortnight’s guest Perry Zurn has written a beautiful book about how trans life creates spaces for itself in the cracks, at the edges and in other liminal spaces. We speak about trans life at the university, trans poetics, and the problematisation of trans inclusion. Perry tells me about how he was able to rethink methodologies and the role of the researcher by working with story-led theory. Tune in now to attune yourself to trans thinking, histories and ourchives.  

References:
Perry Zurn’s How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University (Duke University Press, 2025)
Perry Zurn and Dani S. Bassett’s Curious Minds: The Power of Connection (MIT Press, 2022)
Ren-yo Hwang
Enoch Page
Jack Gieseking
Andrea Lawlor
Jen Manion
Cavar’s “In Praise of -Less”
https://azejournal.com/article/2022/8/4/in-praise-of-less-transmad-shouts-from-absent-places
Amherst Collee, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and University of Massachusetts Amherst  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What might trans poetics be? How does Perry define this term?
2.      Why does Perry like thinking through problems? What are two problems we speak about on the podcast?
3.      Perry describes what story-led theory is and how this method is, in a way, the opposite of how philosophy traditionally uses stories. Can you explain what story-led theory is and how it is different from other theory?
4.      How does Perry use the term ‘attunement’?
5.      Perry explains finding thematic clusters such as pebble, dust and glue. What is an object or entity you associate with trans life?

Please listen to this super special episode to meet Mark King from Queer Britain and also to hear all about the upcoming sold-out launch of ListenQueer, the accessible LGBTQIA+ history app!

listenqueer.co.uk
queerbritain.org.uk
https://www.outsavvy.com/event/26049/listenqueer-walking-tour-and-app-launch

Meet Talia Bettcher, the amazing philosopher who gave us canonical essays like “Trapped in the Wrong Theory” and “Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers,” and has now published a paradigm-shifting book about trans philosophy. Talia tells me about why personhood may be overrated, why the existential WTF lead her to this realisation, and how it’s really all about relationships. We also discuss three of Talia’s highly influential concepts: reality enforcement, the wrong body account, and the beyond the binary model.

CW: transphobia, violence, abuse, sexual abuse, sexual abuse while unconscious (from 28 mins)

References:
Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2025)
Bettcher, Talia Mae. “Trapped in the Wrong Theory: Rethinking Trans Oppression and Resistance” (Signs 39.2, 2014)
Merryleggs, the Magical Pony
Bettcher, Talie Mae. “Evil Deceivers and Make-Believers: On Transphobic Violence and the Politics of Illusion” (Hypatia 22.3, 2007)
Gwen Araujo
The existential WTF
Reality enforcement
Interpersonal spatiality
María Lugones
Marilyn Frye
John Locke
Peter Singer
Phoria
Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera
Jay Prosser’s Second Skins  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is reality enforcement and how does it express transphobia?
2.      What is personhood? Why is it generally perceived as a positive concept?
3.      Why does Talia put a focus on relationships instead?
4.      Talia speaks about two ways of viewing transness: the “beyond the binary” model and the “wrong body” account. What are these and why is Talia critical of both of them?
5.      How can you show up to support trans rights?

Welcome to a brand-new queer space special! Come along to visit All She Wrote Books, a fabulous queer feminist bookshop, located in Somerville, MA, an area that is historically significant for feminist literary activism. Owner Christina Pascucci-Ciampa tells me about what it was like turning All She Wrote Books from the queer literary pop-up that unicorn dreams are made of into a (yellow) brick (road) and mortar shop and community space. We also learn about Ruby, the bookshop’s Chief Barking Officer, and about what made Christina believe in the magical powers of storytelling.

References:
https://www.allshewrotebooks.com/
@allshewrotebooks
New Words
Kristen Hogan’s The Feminist Bookstore Movement (Duke UP, 2016)
American Booksellers Association
Emma Straub
Books Are Magic
Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (Carol)
Audre Lorde
Adrienne Rich
bell hooks
Julie Enszer
Sinister Wisdom
Feminist Bookstore News
https://sinisterwisdom.org/FBN
Malinda Lo
Ruby, Chief Barking Officer
https://www.allshewrotebooks.com/friendsofruby
Crafty Queer Studio 
https://www.craftyqueerstudio.com/
The Wizard of Oz
Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider
Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House/Her Body and Other Parties
This Queer Book Saved My Life podcast
Lindy West
Sarah Schulman  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening: 

1.     Christina speaks about why pop-up bookshops were an important part of All She Wrote’s journey. What are some benefits of a pop-up bookshop?
2.      If you could host a book pop-up at any location, where would it be?
3.      Why are libraries great? What are some of their limits?
4.      Why do we need specialist bookshops? Why are they spaces of activism?

What does AI have to do with queerness? And how could the use of machine learning affect our lives and our rights as LGBTQIA+ people? Daniella Gáti shares the answers to these questions and more. Daniella is an expert in narrative, creative computing, and brings a unique transdisciplinary perspective to both. We touch on facial recognition, what is happening in Hungary, and speak about common misconceptions about AI.  

References:
Gáti, Daniella. ‘Theorizing Mathematical Narrative through Machine Learning’. Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 53, no. 1, 2023, pp. 139–65.
Gáti, Daniella . “AI, Queerness, and Humanity: How AI Reshapes the World and What We Can Do about It” (8 February, 2025, TedX Talk)
The Palgrave Handbook of Feminist, Queer and Trans* Narrative Studies (Vera Nuenning and Corinna Assman, eds)
Nicola Dinan’s Disappoint Me
Thon (19th century gender-neutral pronoun)
Dennis Baron’s What’s Your Pronoun: Beyond He and She
Jordy Rosenberg’s Confessions of the Fox
Erzsébet Galgóczi’s A törvényen kívül és belül (Another Love)  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Why might AI not be compatible with queer thought?
2.      How can facial recognition affect rights of LGBTQIA+ people?
3.      What is a common misconception about AI?
4.      What is machine learning?
5.      What role might narrative play in all of this?  

Meet Julie Enszer, editor of Sinister Wisdom, dyke poetry superstar, and protector of the lesbian archives. Julie and I speak about shared queer cultures, lesbian feminist publishing, and all of the amazing queer archiving projects Julie is involved in. We also speak about the importance of sharing knowledge and practices of resistance, especially at a time like the present moment. Since Julie is particularly invested in sharing these practices internationally, she is part of the team that is bringing the Lesbian Lives conference to New York in October 2025… Tune in for the details.  

References:
https://julierenszer.com/
Sinister Wisdom 
https://www.sinisterwisdom.org/
@sinister_wisom (IG)
Julie Enszer’s The Pinko Commie Dyke (Indolent Books, 2024) with illustrations by Isabel Clare Paul
OutWrite: The Speeches that Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture (ed. Julie Enszer and Elena Gross, Rutgers UP, 2022)
The Complete Works of Pat Parkers (ed. Julie Enszer, Sinister Wisdom/A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2016)
Fire-Rimmed Eden: Selected Poems by Lynn Lonidier (ed. Julie Enszer, Sinister Wisdom, 2023)
Sinister Wisdom 128: Trans/Feminisms
Reveal Digital Archives
https://about.jstor.org/revealdigital/
The Lesbian Poetry Archive 
http://lesbianpoetryarchive.org/
Feminist Bookstore News Archive
https://www.lesbianpoetryarchive.org/fbn
Carol Seajay
Women in Print Movement
Catherine Nicholson
Harriet Desmoines
Hillary Clinton
Lesbian Lives Conference
Ella Ben Hagai
The Journal of Lesbian Studies
Olu Jenzen
CLAGS (The Centre for LGBTQ Studies, CUNY)
https://www.gc.cuny.edu/clags-center-lgbtq-studies
Matt Brim
Grace Nichols’ The Fat Black Woman’s Poems
Heresies
http://heresiesfilmproject.org/archive/
Cheryl Clarke
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/cheryl-clarke
Tim Retzloff
https://michiganlgbtqremember.com/842-2/
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home
Marilyn Hacker’s Love, Death and the Changing of the Seasons (1986)  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:
1.      How do we build lesbian and feminist communities? Which examples does Julie give?
2.      What are the Reveal Digital Archives?
3.      What types of writing does Sinister Wisdom publish and what would Julie like to see more of? In which year was the journal launched?
4.      How does Julie describe the importance of lesbian archives?
5.      How might archives help us with lesbian, queer and trans oganising?  

Whether you share them, prefer them or avoid them – pronouns are everywhere. As Laura Paterson, a linguist who specialises in pronouns, tells us, this is a. because they are an essential part of grammar and b. because they are particularly sexy right now. Laura tells us what exactly a pronoun is and why third-person personal pronouns can cause so much controversy, despite the fact that their main job is just to point to things.  

References: 
Paterson, Laura L. The Routledge Handbook of Pronouns. (Routledge, 2024)
Paterson, Laura L. and Gregory, Ian N. Representations of Poverty and Place: Using Geographical Text Analysis to Understand Discourse. (Palgrave, 2018)
Paterson, Laura L. British Pronoun Use, Prescription, and Processing: Linguistic and Social Influences Affecting 'They' and 'He' (Palgrave, 2014)
Ann Leckie
Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time
Ashley Reilly-Thornton
Susan Stryker
Lal Zimman
Gardelle, Laure. “Pronoun Activism and the Power of Animacy” The Routledge Handbook of Pronouns. (Routledge, 2024)
Journal of Language and Discrimination (https://journal.equinoxpub.com/JLD)
Dennis Baron’s What’s Your Pronoun (Liveright, 2020)
Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists (‎G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018)  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. What is a pronoun?
2. Why can pronouns ‘humanise’ characters?
3. Which two uses of singular they do we speak about? Can you think of others?
4. When might the pronoun ‘it’ become important in activism?
5. What are combined pronouns and why are they no longer in fashion?
6. What are some considerations around pronoun sharing that Laura touches on? How do you feel about this?

   

Would you like to hear about a 100-year-old public Art nouveau toilet turned queer art gallery? Or about the police station that went from a site of protest and oppression to a place of LGBTQIA+ storytelling? Then this is the episode for you. George Savoulis, director of Qtopia Sydney, is taking us all the way to Australia to tell us all about the magic of queer history, reclaiming of space, and the beauty of queer creativity.  

References:

https://qtopiasydney.com.au/
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
Darlinghurst Police Station
Troughman
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras?
2.      Where did the 1978 protests take place and what were they about?
3.      What is the pink triangle?
4.      If you could choose any space to turn into a queer gallery, museum or performance space, which space would that be?  

Join me and Louise Siddons, professor of visual politics par excellence, to learn about Laura Gilpin, the lesbian photographer who spent 30 years creating her book The Enduring Navaho in and with both queer and Navajo community. Louise speaks about the lesbian gaze in Gilpin’s photographs, the lesbian networks of Santa Fe, where Gilpin and her partner lived, and the intersectional methods that Louise brings to writing about these. The thoughtful (and fun) observations Louise shares about Gilpin’s work and voice will stay with you.

Come for the fascinating content, stay for the free writing advice, and get more of both by following @lsiddons.bsky.social and @uni_southampton_wsa (on Instagram). Stay up-to-date about the podcast on Instagram @queerlitpodcast or on Blue Sky (@lenamattheis.bsky.social).  

References:
Louise Siddons’ Good Pictures Are a Strong Weapon: Laura Gilpin, Queerness and Navajo Sovereignty (University of Minnesota Press, 2024)
Louise Siddons’ Centering Modernism: J. Jay McVicker and Postwar American Art (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018)
Laura Gilpin’s The Enduring Navaho (University of Texas Press, 1968)
Wanda Corn, professor emerita, Stanford University Clarence Hudson White, photographer (American, 1871-1925)
Elizabeth Forster (public health nurse and Gilpin’s partner, American, 1886-1972)
Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Helen Langa, emerita, American University
Lesbian gaze
Herbert Blatchford (Diné (Navajo), dates unknown)
Karen-edis Barzman, scholar in residence, Newberry Library
Heather Love, University of Pennsylvania
Mara Gold, University of Oxford
Laura Gilpin, The Summer Shelter of Old Lady Long Salt (published in The Enduring Navaho, gelatin silver print, 1953)
Bean Yazzie (Diné (Navajo), b. 1978)
Refugee Tales
David Herd, University of St. Andrews
Janice Gould’s Doubters and Dreamers (University of Arizona Press, 2011)    

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Who is Laura Gilpin?
2.      Why are lesbian networks relevant in Louise’s thinking about Gilpin’s work?
3.      What do you think a lesbian gaze might be?
4.      Why is intersectionality such an important topic in this episode, although we only explicitly speak about it at the end?
5.      Louise shares some writing advice in the episode. What is your favourite bit of writing advice?

Do we perhaps deserve the impossible? This is only one of the many beautiful questions Marquis Bey asks in this poem of an episode. Marquis is an exquisite thinker who joins me to speak about the incredible book Black Trans Feminism and share thoughts about why such a feminism is for everyone. Marquis speaks about how literature allows us to imagine new possibilities to exist in the world and see how everything is entangled with everything else. Join me to learn from Marquis, to think about abolition, coalition, fugitivity and traniflesh, and to imagine what the world could be beyond the realistic and the possible.  

References:
https://www.marquisbey.com/
Marquis Bey’s Black Trans Feminism (Duke UP, 2022)
Marquis Bey’s Cistem Failure (Duke UP, 2022)
Marquis Bey’s The Problem of the Negro as a Problem for Gender (University of Minnesota Press, 2020)
Marquis Bey’s “RE: [No Subject]—On Nonbinary Gender.” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences (2022)
Saidiya Hartman
Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ M Archive and Undrowned
Lauryn Hill
Denise Ferreira da Silva
Toni Morrison
N.K. Jemisin
Octavia Butler
Rivers Solomon
Andrew Cutrone
Sarah Jane Cervenak
Fred Moten
Roxane Gay
Stefano Harney
Jack Halberstam
Tina Campt
Ralph Ellison
Traniflesh
Emma Heaney
Hortense Spillers’ “Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe”
K. Marshall Green
Treva Ellison
Tranifest Spillers, Hortense, et al. "" Whatcha gonna do?": Revisiting ‘Mama's baby, papa's maybe:’ An American grammar book": A conversation with Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Shelly Eversley, & Jennifer L. Morgan." Women's Studies Quarterly 35.1/2 (2007): 299-309.
Abraham Weil 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua_Hm6wePro
Ciara Cremin
Transgender Theory (Bloomsbury)
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/transgender-theory/
A Nonbinary Life (forthcoming) Asterisk (Duke UP) 
https://www.dukeupress.edu/series/asterisk-gender-trans-and-all-that-comes-after
Jian Neo Chen
Susan Stryker
Eliza Steinbock
C. Riley Snorton’s Black On Both Sides
Jess Goldberg’s Abolition Time
Frieren  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is Black Trans Feminism? Why is it for everyone?
2.      How can identities provide comfort and safety and why is that not always useful?
3.      What are the terms Marquis thinks about in relation to allyship?
4.      How does Marquis define traniflesh?
5.      Which thinkers inform Marquis’ thinking about fugitivity and what is the central metaphor Marquis introduces here?
6.      What might be challenging about thinking Black Trans Feminism in the way Marquis proposes it?
7.      How do you feel about the impossible and the unrealistic?

You’ve read Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts but have you heard of the scholar who puts the auto in theories? Meet Alex Brostoff, my new favourite autotheorist. Alex is here to clear up common misconceptions about autotheories and tell us more about biomythography, teoría de la noche, and reading beside. I was also intrigued to learn about intertextual kinship and hear Alex’s (beautifully phrased) thoughts on co-writing and co-translating. 

References:

Alex Brostoff and Lauren Fournier (eds) Autotheory (special issue of ASAP/Journal, 2021)
Alex Brostoff and Vilashini Cooppan (eds) Autotheories (MIT Press, 2025)
Alex Brostoff’s Unruly Relations: A Critical Reframing of Autotheory (Columbia University Press, forthcoming)
Alex Brostoff and rl Goldberg (eds) Trans Literature (special issue of College Literature, 2025)
Alex Brostoff and rl Goldberg (eds) Reassignments: Trans and Sex from the Clinical to the Critical (Fordham University Press, forthcoming)
Stryker, Susan. "Transgender studies: Queer theory's evil twin." GLQ: A journal of lesbian and gay studies 10.2 (2004): 212-215.
Intertextual kinship in Brostoff’s “An Autotheory of Intertextual Kinship: Ambivalent Bodies in the Work of Maggie Nelson and Paul Preciado.” Special issue, “Dissident Self-Narratives: Radical and Queer Life Writing,” ed. Aude Haffen. Synthesis: An Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies 14 (2021): 91-115.
Kai Minosh Pyle trans*temporal kinship
Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts
Roland Barthes
Paul Preciado’s Testo Junkie
On the Eve of This Death
Freccero, Carla. "The ‘Auto’ of Theory." in Autotheories (MIT Press, 2025) 
Foucault
Derrida
Gloria Anzaldúa
This Bridge Called My Back Borderlands/La Frontera
Theory in the flesh
 Autohistoria-teoría
Audre Lorde’s Zami
Biomythography
María Moreno’s teoría de la noche (theory of the night)
Sedgwick’s reading beside
Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Steward’s The Hundreds
Heather Love
John Money
Richard Green
Judith Butler’s Who’s Afraid of Gender
Cameron Awkward-Rich
Stephanie Burt
Liz Rose
Nat Rivkin
Jordy Rosenberg
Trish Salah
torrin a. greathouse
Cole Rizki
TSQ
@alextakesfotos (on Instagram)
@AlexBrostoff (on X)
@alexbrostoff.bsky.social (on Bluesky)
TravestiAmara Moira, “Loose Tongues,” a selection from Neca (2021), translated by Jesse Rothbard and edited by Cole Rizki, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly (forthcoming, 2025).

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1. What is autotheory and why might Alex prefer the plural autotheories?
2. What are some related concepts or theories?
3. Which thinkers do we commonly associate with autotheories?
4. Name at least two texts that Alex posits as central to autotheories.
5. Alex speaks a lot about co-writing. Have you ever experienced “being deep in the trenches of someone else’s sentences”? How do you co-write?

Are you in the mood for queer joy and lots of panache? Come, come, listen to this episode about Virginia Gay’s Cyrano, an excitingly fun, gender-twisting play that you will love to the moon and back. Virginia talks about why this play resonates so much for queer people, how James McAvoy made her want to write it, and why theatre should always be hot, weird, funny and no more than a 90-minute experience.

To keep up-to-date with this beautiful production, follow @cyranolive and @thatsmsgaytoyou on Instagram. @queerlitpodcast is there too.  

References:
Cyrano de Bergerac
Fried Green Tomatoes
Park Theatre London @parktheatrelondon
James McAvoy
Jamie Lloyd
Steve Martin
Roxanne (1987)
Daryl Hannah
L’esprit de l’escalier
Jessica Whitehurst
Joseph Evans
The Handmaiden
Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith
Roxane Gay
Virginia Gay’s Cyrano (Spotify) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Uayz56Nzmdekj1rry7rIP  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Virginia’s Cyrano is what one might call a gender-swap moment. Can you think of other plays, rewrites, or adaptions that alter the story by changing the protagonist’s gender?
2.      We use three different pronouns for Cyrano in the episode. Which one is your favourite and why?
3.      Virginia speaks about several moments of metatheatre. Can you look up what metatheatre means and name one example?
4.      What does ‘l’esprit de l’escalier’ mean and how does it relate to writing?
5.      Virginia speaks about the complicity of the audience in problematic stories. Have you ever wanted to apologise to a character?
6.      What playlist (or play) gives you queer joy?

In part two of our festive end-of-year special, you will hear about queer families and mourning, gay novels and book festivals, cargo pants and Vaseline, and lesbians and travel. What’s the queerest thing you did in 2024? And how will you power bottom that in 2025?  

References:
Karen Tongson’s Norm Porn
Amber Jamilla Musser
Feminist Keywords podcast
Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Survival is a Promise and Undrowned
Mabel Mundy
Kerstin-Anja Muenderlein
Jack Strange’s Look Up, Handsome
Gay on Wye
Out and Wild
Pigeon Books
London LGBTQ Centre
Bluestockings
Liz’s Book Bar
Sweet Pickle Books
The Ripped Bodice
Gay’s The Word
Happiest Season  
Victor Garber

In part one of our festive end-of-year special, you will hear about queer weddings and Madonna, intersex dinosaurs and PhDs, crafting and queer culture, and how all lesbians do kind of know each other. What’s the queerest thing you did in 2024? And how will you top that in 2025?  

References:
Hollis Griffin
Libro.Fm
Ashley Herring Blake’s Make the Season Bright
Bridgerton
Material Girls
Hannah McGregor’s Podcast or Perish and Clever Girl
Jurassic Park
Theoryish
Hannah Ayres
Paola Medina-Gonzalez
Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold
Mo Moulton
So Mayer’s Truth & Dare
listenqueer.co.uk
Blossom LGBTQ
The Female Glaze
Kit Schuster
Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries
Marquis Bey’s Black Trans Feminism

Fierce femme dinosaurs, intersex embodiment, Laura Dern – it’s surprisingly easy to read Jurassic Park as a feminist celebration of monstrous queer bodies, at least when you have the magnificent Hannah McGregor by your side. In Hannah’s ‘bookiest book yet,’ we learn about lesbian dinosaurs, the ignorance of white male adventurers, and how and why they’re erotically eviscerated for their flaws. Not to be missed!

If you would like to observe us in the wild, follow us on Instagram: @hkpmcgregor and @queerlitpodcast.  

References:
Jurassic Park
Hannah McGregor’s Podcast or Perish
Material Girls
Theodor Rex
Whoopi Goldberg
Emmanuel Levinas
Laura Mulvey
Hannah McGregor’s A Sentimental Education
The Little Mermaid
Ursula
The Last Unicorn
Jen Sookfong Lee (Pop Classic series)
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Femme Shark Manifesto!
Terra nullius
Laura Dern
Verlyn Klinkenborg’s “What Were Dinosaurs For?”
Prehistoric Planet with David Attenborough
Ellen Ripley
Tales of the City
@hkpmcgregor and @ohwitchplease (Instagram)
Making Worlds podcast 
https://www.hannahmcgregor.com/
Agatha All Along  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Why/How can we read Jurassic Park as a feminist film?
2.      What is the ‘monstrous-feminine’? How does Hannah speak about this? Can you find out which other scholar(s) we may associate with this term?
3.      What does terra nullius mean? How is this relevant to Hannah’s reading of the film?
4.      Lena calls Jurassic Park a queer ecology in the episode. Please name at least two reasons why this term might apply.
5.      What does Hannah highlight about Indigenous and decolonial scholarship in relation to Jurassic Park?
6.     How do you feel about Laura Dern?  

Have you thought to yourself recently: How come trans literature is having such a moment right now? Then this episode is for you. Sabine Sharp, editor of The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature (2024), is joining me for a chat about the significance of trans literature today, as well as its roots and legacies, especially in the 20th century. Sabine speaks about the difficult implications of transness as a symbol of futurity in science fiction and contrasts a personal connection with 1970s feminist science fiction to contemporary frictions between some feminisms and transness.

As you listen to this episode, we recommend transing transily through your house and following @queerlitpodcast on Instagram.  

References:
The Routledge Handbook of Trans Literature (2024)
Material Girls podcast
Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer
Douglas Vakoch
The Climate Deniers Playbook
Rollie Williams
Nicole Conlan
Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot duology
Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries
Judith Butler’s Undoing Gender
Eman Abdelhadi and M. E. O'Brien’s Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072
Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time
Ursula LeGuin
Philip K. Dick
Cecilia Gentili’s Faltas: Letters to Everyone in My Hometown Who Isn't My Rapist
Little Puss  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      How does Sabine describe the current moment in trans literature? Why do we need a handbook of trans literature now?
2.      What might the relationship between trans literature and ecocriticism be?
3.      Why is science fiction an interesting but also potentially problematic genre when it comes to depiction of transness and gender nonconformity?
4.     What is Sabine gesturing to when speaking about the relationship between feminist science fiction and transness in the late 20th century and feminism and transness today?
5.      What can we learn from trans literature?

How does your embodiment affect your perception and thus your writing? This is one of many questions Amber Jamilla Musser tackles in her most recent monograph, which builds on her brilliant work in Black feminism and queer femininity. Amber tells us how sensation and individual experience need to be part of an ethics of perception and why queerness is method that allows us to think capaciously and in connection with the body.

Come and marinate in the unruliness of being with us! Follow @queerlitpodcast and @a_jamilla on Instagram for more.  

References:
https://www.amberjamillamusser.com/
Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (NYU Press, 2014)
Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance (NYU Press, 2018)
Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined (Duke University Press, 2024)
Queer Form (special issue of ASAP, edited by Kadji Amin, Amber Jamilla Musser and Roy Pérez)
Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies (NYU Press, 2021)
Feminist Keywords Podcast
Karen Tongson
Association for Study of the Arts of the Present (ASAP)
Jordan Peele’s Us
Ming Smith’s Flamingo Fandango (West Berlin) (painted)
Édouard Glissant
Ronak Kapadia
Stephanie Clare
Sharon Holland’s an other
Tiffany Lethabo King
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Audre Lorde
Titus Kaphar’s Pillow for Fragile Fictions
Audre Lorde’s Zami: A Biomythography
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan’s Big Girl  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What does Amber mean when she speaks about masochism?
2.      What might an ethics of perception be?
3.      Amber speaks about how our bodily histories affect how we perceive. What is you bodily history?
4.      Amber suggests that queerness is a method in Between Shadows and Noise. What does this method allow Amber to do?
5.      How is knowledge embodied? Do you think about this when you read or write academic texts, which often suggest a neutral, disembodied perspective?

Have you heard of the wholesome queer Gothic? This is the cool new term that might just explain why so many of us were obsessed with monsters, witches, witches and vampires before we came out of the coffin, uhm, closet. Sarah Faber and Kerstin-Anja Münderlein join me for this spooky special to speak about their favourite Gothic books, games, and tropes, and about the amazing collection they co-edited. Tune in for seasonal reading recommendations and reflections on gender transgressions in Gothic narratives.  

References:
Rethinking Gothic Transgressions of Gender and Sexuality (Routledge, 2024)
Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian (1797) and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)
Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca
Naomi Novik’s Uprooted and The Scholomance
K.J. Charles’s Band Sinister
Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines
Bloodborne
Dark Souls
Fallen London
Castlevania
Sunless Sea
Doppelganger
Lara Brändle
Franziska Quabeck
Charles Dickens
Alycia Garbay
Grace King
Kit Schuster
Jennifer’s Body
Dracula
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher
Julia Armfield’s Private Rites
The Hays Code
RuPaul’s Drag Race
Heartstopper
Casey McQuiston
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Interview with The Vampire
Brad Pitt
Night Cascades
Hanako Games
Carolyn Dinshaw
Elizabeth Freeman
Kirsty Logan’s Things We Say in the Dark
Juno Dawson’s Wonderland (2020)  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      Why is the Gothic both a genre and a mode? What do these terms mean?
2.      What are typical tropes and features of Gothic writing?
3.      Which century might we consider as an origin point of Gothic writing?
4.      What is the wholesome queer Gothic?
5.      What are male and female traditions of the Gothic?
6.      What is your favourite kind of monster and why?            

Femme theory, bisexual butches, racy footnotes – the brand-new edited collection Queering Desire has it all. The brilliant editors, Róisín Ryan-Flood and Amy Tooth Murphy, join me for a chat about  what the book means to them and how challenging and rewarding interdisciplinary research on lesbians and sapphics can be. They dive into the multi-faceted contributions and how they matter to queer culture today and also generously share their personal experience in collecting the many gems that make up Queering Desire. Follow @roisinryanflood and @queerlitpodcast on Instagram to learn more!

References:
Holding Hands: Experiences of shame, pride and protest among LGBT relationship partners
Centre for Intimate and Sexual Citizenship
https://www.essex.ac.uk/centres-and-institutes/intimate-and-sexual-citizenship
Notches
Esther Newton
Sally Munt
Anne Lister
Les Feinberg
Billie Eilish
Charli XCX
Eleanor Medhurst
Sarah Joy Ford
Susan Stryker
Rosalind Gill
Kimberley Mather
Mie Astrup Jensen
El. Reid-Buckley
Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki
Liz Millward
Marie Lou Duret
Prudence Bussey-Chamberlain #
Ken Plummer
Agnes
Ella Ben Hagai
Dominique Adams-Santos
Skala Eressos
Sappho
Sadie Lee
Libro Levi Bridgeman’s The Butch Monologues
Jack Halberstam’s Female Masculinities
Ladies of Llangollen
José Esteban Muñoz
K. Allison Hammer
Gay’s The Word
Esther Newton’s My Butch Career
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold
Patricia Highsmith’s Carol (The Price of Salt)
The Talented Mr Ripley
Andrew Scott Alfred
Hitchcock Strangers on a Train
Lillian Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Men
Grace Ellis’ Flung out of Space  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      The editors speak a lot about interdisciplinarity and their respective backgrounds in the humanities and in sociology. Which challenges and benefits of working across disciplines do they mention? Can you think of others?
2.      Another important thread is queerness across different generations. How do you experience queer kinship across generations? What do you think the term ‘queer lineage’ might mean?
3.      What might femme theory be? Please look up the term and see what you find.
4.      What do the editors say about online and physical queer space?
5.      Which essay of Queering Desire are you going to read first and why?  

Get ready, queer language enthusiasts and trans literature francophiles! In another spontaneous recording from Lesvos, Mélie Boltz Nasr aka May tells us all about their genderbending fairy tale collection for adult readers. We also speak about feminist fonts, French grammar and how queering language is not just an activist aim but also a beautiful creative practice. To learn more about May, follow them on Instagram and check out @queerlitpodcast while you’re there.  

References:
Skala Eressos
Sappho
Contes D’Un Autre Bois
https://www.editions-ixe.fr/catalogue/contes-dun-autre-bois/
Charles Perrault
Grimm brothers
Walt Disney
Hassan Abdulrazzak’s Laila Pines For The Wolf
https://medium.com/@abdulrazzak/laila-pines-for-the-wolf-3710e81ebbd0
Éditions iXe
Bye Bye Binary
https://typotheque.genderfluid.space/fr
@bye.byebinary
BBB Baskervvol
Glyph
Alpheratz
Ursula Le Guin “Is Gender Necessary? Redux” 
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-is-gender-necessary-redux
Aesop
Lettre Aux Copaines 
https://lettre-aux-copaines.kessel.media/posts  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What might the political framework of your favourite fairy tale be?
2.      Have you ever used an inclusive font? What do you think of this idea?
3.      What is an example of feminist grammar in your native language?
4.      Do you think nonbinary language is political? What is its place in creative practice?
5.      If you were to invent a nonbinary font, what would it be called?    

Guess who I ran into on the beautiful island of Lesvos: Karen McLeod, author of the amazing memoir Lifting Off. Karen sat down with me at Ohana Saloon, a queer-owned beach bar in Skala Eressos, and told me about her performance art, about working as aircrew as a queer woman, experiences with addiction, and about a new Lesvos-related book she is just starting to write…

Warning for the noise-sensitive: you will be able to hear the ocean, the wind, and the many, many lesbians.


Learn more about Karen’s work on Instagram @therealkarenmcleod and see @queerlitpodcast for our newest episodes.  

References: 
Out and Wild
Barbara Brownskirt
Lifting Off
In Search of a Missing Eyelash
Muswell Press
The Bookseller Crow
Cindy Sherman
Section 28
Polari
Shirley Valentine
The Short Tall Letter 
https://karenmcleod.substack.com/
Julia Darling’s Crocodile Soup
Jackie Kay
Stella Duffy  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      We are recording in Skala Eressos, which has a close connection to Lesbian poet Sappho. Why not take a moment to read more about Sappho right now?
2.      Karen begins by speaking about her experience of not being able to be out at work. Do you ever have to hide parts of yourself, based on where you are and who you interact with?
3.      Karen briefly mentions Section 28. If you are not familiar, please look up what this term means in the context of the United Kingdom and homophobic legislation.
4.      Karen and I speak about how amazing intergenerational queer spaces are. Do you share that experience? Why do you think different age groups can learn from one another, especially in an LGBTQIA2S+ context?

Kit Heyam’s amazing history of gender nonconformity across the globe is a dazzling journey into the intricacies of trans history and if it’s not your favourite book already, it will be after listening to this episode. Learn why Kit particularly enjoyed writing about Edo Japan, what they discovered about intersex history and who their favourite person to write about was. We also have a discussion about how biological sex has always been a difficult thing to define and, drumroll, Kit even tells me what their next book will be about…

Grab your earphones, start listening, and follow @kitheyamwriter and @queerlitpodcast on Instagram to learn more.  

References:
Kit Heyam’s Before We Were Trans (2022)
Kit Heyam’s The Reputation of Edward II, 1305-1697 (2020)
Igbo
Edo Japan
Shunga
Wakashū
Sexology
Thomas/Thomasine Hall
Roberta Cowell
Meg-John Barker
Princess Seraphina
Blake Gutt
Iphis and Ianthe
Harlan Weaver’s Bad Dog: Pit Bull Politics and Multispecies Justice (2011)
Mo Moulton
Hijra
Jessica Hinchy
Jules Gill-Peterson
@kitheyamwriter
Sara Taylor’s The Lauras
Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota
The Iliad  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is Kit’s view of trans history? How do they feel about labels?
2.      We speak about how gender expression and sexuality may intersect (although of course they are separate for some people). What does Kit see as a challenge here? Is your gender connected to your sexuality?
3.      One of Kit’s favourite chapters is about biological sex. How would you define biological sex? How has it been defined historically in the examples Kit provides?
4.      What does trans family mean to you?
5.      Kit briefly speaks about the agency of children. Why is that an important topic in queer and trans studies and lives?