Queer Life, Love and Identity

Acclaimed Indonesian author Norman Erikson Pasaribu and award-winning Australian writer Dylin Hardcastle explore the joy, tenderness and triumphs of queer storytelling.

Norman, best known for Happy Stories, Mostly, and their latest book My Dream Job, crafts tender yet sharp narratives about identity, faith and belonging, challenging the expectations of queer life in Indonesia. While Dylin, acclaimed for A Language of Limbs, offers an Australian perspective on intimacy, loss and transformation. Together their work embraces and reclaims; highlighting how storytelling becomes an act of survival and resistance for lives too often kept in the margins.  

Join Norman and Dylin, alongside UNSW’s Christy Newman, as they explore how literature creates space for voices long silenced – and how the most powerful stories are the ones that heal.