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?