The Queer is not for Sale | EnQueer x SWP Series

After two highly successful Queer Writers’ Festivals, EnQueer is bringing a two-panel series to Sydney WorldPride to showcase some of Australia’s leading established and emerging queer writers and thinkers.

The Queer is Not for Sale is an exploration of the ethics of queer memoir in a capitalist literary culture, and focuses the lens on the queer memoir, and the dilemma many queer writers face in deciding how much of themselves, and in particular their trauma or distress, they are willing to reveal.

This is a panel discussion with queer writers of literary memoir and self-exploratory poetry. It will focus on works that are ‘authentic’ and ‘vulnerable’ in their excavation of the self, and will explore the tension between authenticity and capitalism and the complex relationship between writers and publishers on the commodification of self.

Discussing trauma can be cathartic for writers and valuable for audiences, but it can also be something extracted from writers, particularly those early in their careers who are not yet versed in the enforcement of boundaries.

As queerness becomes ever more palatable in the mainstream and a commercially viable subject for heterosexual audiences, writers experience both implicit and explicit pressure to divulge intimate personal experiences.

We talk about community responsibility to uplift other queers, about the value of sharing, about self-preservation, and about sustainably ‘playing the game’ on one’s own terms.

Featuring writers:

Kaya Wilson

Gloria Demillo

Holden Sheppard

Jason Om

Anthony Venn-Brown OAM