PENGUIN PRIDE.
It is no hyperbole to say that the current literary space we occupy is overflowing with queer potential. Never has the zeitgeist, had, or made such room for us to tell our queer stories, in our own words, and in such a variety of styles and a diversity of voices.
I had the opportunity to sit down for a incredibly broad and inspiring discussion with some of Penguin’s magnificent new queer authors, discussing everything from the films and literature that informed their lives and their art today, to sex education and how they carved out their own storytelling niches, to what transformative effects they want their words to have on the people that read their books today.
Paul Flynn, a gay veteran pop-culture journalist by trade, is the author of Good As You – a nonfiction, pop-cultural road to British gay equality, emerging in the atmosphere of 1984’s Bronski Beat gay anthem, Smalltown Boy and spanning the bumpy, heroic journey to 2014’s landmark marriage equality bill.
Kirsty Logan is a Glasgow-based author with her subject matter often rooted in magical realism, fantasy romance. Her most recent book is The Gloaming, a queer, mermaid love story set on a Scottish island that turns people to stone, and her upcoming Things We Say in the Dark, a book of short feminist horror stories, is set for an October release.
Emma Morgan is the debut novelist behind A Love Story for Bewildered Girls, a beautiful piece of fiction that emerged from Penguin’s Write Now diversity scheme. It follows the trials and triumphs of three women blossoming into love, adulthood and navigating queer identity.
Dominic Evans, who works under the pen name DOM&INK, is a queer illustrator, author and self-styled merman. His latest book, Free to Be Me, is an interactive LGBTQ illustrated journal for young people 12 and up to, in his words: “find that inner rainbow, have some self love and take some pride in themselves.”
Tom Rasmussen A.K.A. Crystal Rasmussen OBE, the night-crawling, millionaire-marrying, crocodile-skin-thigh-high-wearing, chanteuse. A sort of jill of all trades (and mistress of many more), author of Diary of A Drag Queen, an unabashedly queer, sexy metropolitan romp, equal parts glamour, filth, revolting and revolutionary.
These writers are a beautiful illustration of what joys and futures we can conjure when we are finally given the means and the platforms to tell our stories and share our truths with the world.
Why did you all write your respective books?
Dom:
I remember thinking wouldn’t it be great if there was a journal where the reader, whether they’re coming out or they’ve come out or they
