This week the Sydney Writer’s Festival will hold an edition of Maeve Marsden’s Queerstories event, but you don’t need to head all the way to Sydney to hear it.
Subiaco Library will be hosting a live stream of the event that features writers Rumaan Alam, Sarah Firth, Hasib Hourani, Daniel Nour, and Torrey Peters.
Each guest is invited to share the story they want to tell, but are never asked to; unexpected tales of pride, prejudice, resilience and resistance.
An institution around the country, Queerstories has played to crowds big and small, from Mudgee to Murwillumbah, Albury to Adelaide, Brisbane and beyond, with an award-winning podcast featuring an archive of nearly 400 queer tales.
Maeve Marsden spoke to Leigh Andrew Hill about Queerstories back in 2021, and when co-editor Graeme Watson was a guest on RTRFM’s Pick a Pod series he nominated it as one of his favourite podcasts.
The event takes place on Friday 23rd May and tickets are available for the Subiaco event are available now. Or if you’re in Sydney you can go along and see the action in person.
The line up is certainly an impressive one.
From Brooklyn comes Rumaan Alam, the author of The New York Times–bestselling novel Leave the World Behind, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and adapted into a major motion picture. He’s also written two other novels. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker and elsewhere. His latest novel is Entitlement.
Sarah Firth is a cartoonist, artist, writer and graphic recorder based on Wurundjeri Country, Melbourne. Her debut graphic novel Eventually Everything Connects won the Emily Toth Award, a Gold Ledger, was shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Award and selected as one of The Best Graphic Novels Ever by Refinery29.
Hasib Hourani is a Lebanese-Palestinian writer, editor, arts worker and educator living on unceded Wangal Country. His debut book, rock flight, was released with Giramondo in 2024.
Daniel Nour is an award-winning Egyptian-Australian writer and journalist. His work explores the intersection of queer and migrant experiences and has featured in The New York Times, the ABC, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Mascara Literary Review, The Big Issue and Eureka Street. His debut memoir, How to Dodge Flying Sandals (Affirm Press), is set for release in May 2025.
Torrey Peters is the author of the novel Detransition, Baby, which won the 2021 PEN/Hemingway award for debut fiction and was named a Best Book of the Century by The New York Times. Her second book, Stag Dance, is out now.
Images: Maeve Marsden photographed by Patrick Boland, Daniel Nour photographed by Kashif Harrison, hasib Hourani photographed by Leah Jing McIntosh, Rumaan Alam photographed by David A. Land.
