Beautifully queer way into Aotearoa’s rainbow writing

Out Here: An Anthology of Takata¯ pui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa edited by Chris Tse and Emma Barnes, $49.99

There will be names you know and do not know, but you will close the book feeling enlightened and present.

This book feels alive – with a pulse, a heartbeat – and it requires a response that ought to do it justice.

However, it is insanely difficult to articulate just how amazing this publication is – without fear or anxiety of doing a bad job – as well as finding an appropriate starting point so as to capture what it achieves as a whole.

By way of an introduction, we can look to the artwork that adorns the beautiful publication Out Here: An Anthology of Takata¯ pui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa.

Thick brush stokes of purple, pink, orange and teal whirl across the top half of the cover. Each brush stroke is unique, with the colours overlapping and appearing to be in movement.

The title Out Here stands tall and bold against the white background, as if proud of their work, and it is the key words beneath the title that signal what Out Here refers to: Takata¯ pui and LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa. Not just words, of course, but names and nouns, proper nouns, something that exists – perhaps that is where the heartbeat comes from.

There was familiarity and nonfamiliarity in the words

Takata¯ pui, LGBTQIA+, writers, and Aotearoa. My mind gravitated towards the words in isolation but struggled to imagine them together…Takata¯ pui, LGBTQIA+ writers from Aotearoa? Who are they? It is here that I began to realise just how needed this publication is. Perhaps ignorance is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, as such, but something that is surprisingly refreshing, which is a sentiment I suspect many will feel upon reading this anthology, and also appears to be something that the editors themselves experienced.

Chris Tse and Emma Barnes did not set out to know all the writers but they did have a core goal: to curate something for which there is need: an anthology of writers that extends beyond the binary of gay and lesbian that has previously been the extent of visibility in Aotearoa. They have included as many sexual and gender identities as possible, honouring Takata¯ pui and all the letters of LGBTQIA+ as a reflection of Aotearoa’s rainbow community.

The editors have achieved this in such a way that is beautifully queer and that is through collaboration. Tse and Barnes sent out a call for submissions and the response was delightfully overwhelming. They received entries from more than 200 writers, of whom only about 30 percent were on their radar.

If ignorance has any place in the context of this anthology, it is also where the editors have done exceptionally well to shift it. They have carefully selected work by writers to illustrate that queerness is diverse and not limited to just coming out or even tragedy.

Out Here is thoughtful, delicate and refreshing. There will be names you know and do not know, but you will close the book feeling enlightened and present. No doubt more is to come, for it proves that we have a future and place among the literary scene of Aotearoa. So count yourself included.

This review was originally published on Kete (ketebooks.co.nz) and is reproduced with kind permission.