Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories features stories by Australian authors Jax Jacki Brown, Claire G Coleman, Michael Earp, Alison Evans, Erin Gough, Benjamin Law, Omar Sakr, Christos Tsiolkas, Ellen Van Neerven, Marlee Jane Ward, Jen Wilde, and Nevo Zizin.

Honestly, I can’t even begin to explain how important this book is because everyone should have a copy in their collection of books! It’s a must read and I personally found there was a lot to love about this short story anthology. Plus now I’m also excited to discover more work from these Australian authors as I’ve previously only read Jen Wilde, but hope to read Erin Gough and Alison Evans soon!

The stories are all incredibly diverse and it was great to see how each author brought something so interesting and incredible to each story as it was filled to the brim with emotion and pride. As the reader, I felt myself getting swept up in these characters’ stories and just feeling so proud of all these characters!

I dare you to try and not be moved by these stories because it’s near impossible. For example, in Rats – where a supposed “street rat finds her crew in peril, only to also encounter a fateful meeting that same day” – my heart swelled right from the get go! Just the way these characters (not just in Rats, but in each of the stories) just leapt off the page – I just wanted them all to be happy!

Which brings me to say, I love that most of these characters felt comfortable in their skin. It makes me happy and proud reading about people of different orientations just being happy and owning it in their own skin – as everyone should be! The number of non binary characters that made their way into these stories just made me feel excited that these people are being included. From bisexual and gays to lesbian characters, it just really goes to show how amazing these authors are at bringing these characters to the page so effectively and a voice.

I can’t really fault anything with these stories, if at all – I wish they were longer. It really felt like you could read full length books on what happens to the characters after their individual stories whether it be first meetings to weddings or literally just everything in between!

Can we also appreciate that one of these stories, by the wonderful Jax Jacki Brown, featured a gay female character who is confined to a wheelchair along with the other prominent character in the same story is as well? I had honestly never read a story where the main character was wheelchair reliant, and I just found her narrative to be really empowering – this character, when meeting up with another, goes on to say how people that are able bodied with two legs to walk on don’t really take the needs of disabled people into account when it comes to different things such as accessing buildings. It just makes you want to stand up for everyone to have equal rights so we’re all treated equally.

Another highlight for me was Jen Wilde’s story of a bisexual fangirl at a convention who feels anxious despite the slight presence of her closest friend, before she unexpectedly meets fellow fangirls who are all queer too! One is even the designer of a t-shirt the main character wears! I just love seeing fangirls and fanboys and people sharing their love for fandom whilst celebrating their pride, it just makes my heart happy!

Something I loved in the introduction of this book was Michael Earp’s writing a human is a human is a human – it’s so true! We all have the same basic needs and all have the right to love whoever we wish to so everyone should respect that! We are not hurting anyone with who we choose to want to be with!

Kindred: 12 Queer #LoveOzYA Stories is available from Book Depository and other good book retailers. Lastly, a huge thank you to the team at Walkers Books for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review and also to the lovely AusYABloggers crew for having my own blog on the blog tour!

Have you read Kindred? Or will you be checking it out? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

Twelve of Australia’s best writers from the LGBTQ+ community are brought together in this ground-breaking collection of YA short stories.

What does it mean to be queer? What does it mean to be human? In this powerful #LoveOzYA collection, twelve of Australia’s finest writers from the LGBTQ+ community explore the stories of family, friends, lovers and strangers – the connections that form us. This inclusive and intersectional #OwnVoices anthology for teen readers features work from writers of diverse genders, sexualities and identities, including writers who identify as First Nations, people of colour or disabled. With short stories by bestsellers, award winners and newcomers to young adult fiction including Jax Jacki Brown, Claire G Coleman, Michael Earp, Alison Evans, Erin Gough, Benjamin Law, Omar Sakr, Christos Tsiolkas, Ellen van Neerven, Marlee Jane Ward, Jen Wilde and Nevo Zisin.

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When we read the words of a creative mind and soul, and they have the artistic power to relate to us without even knowing us, that’s when we, as readers, know they’re an excellent writer. Naturally we become curious about these writers and we’ve been fortunate enough to take a peek inside the poetic mind of Omar Sakr. After you’re done reading his work, you’ll be craving for more. 

In this interview with Omar Sakr, we have the pleasure of learning more about the meaning behind his work and the magnificent poet himself.  

Omar Sakr is an award-winning Arab Australian poet, writer, and editor. His debut poetry collection was These Wild Houses (Cordite) and his new book is The Lost Arabs (UQP). You can find Omar Sakr at his website.

How did poetry find you? Do you feel you sought it out, it just came to you one day by coincidence, or do you feel in your heart you were always meant to be a poet? 

I came to poetry largely by accident. I had one unit left to enrol in for my first semester at Sydney Uni, where I was doing a Masters in Creative Writing, and my housemate suggested I take poetry, which, at the time I mocked because I didn’t understand it, and didn’t think it could understand me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Through the extraordinary tutelage of Judith Beveridge, and watching endless Youtube videos of spoken word poets, I realised the problem had been my education so far. There is a poem, a poet, for everyone: they simply have to be exposed to it. My whole life I had been searching for the right way to express myself, and I found it in poetry. In that way, it’s a coincidence that I’m here, but I still think I was always meant to be a poet.

What inspires you most in your writing? 

A desire to know myself and the world as much as possible.

Does writers block ever get to you, and if so, how do you pull through that?

Not really. I’ve lived as a freelance writer, deadline to deadline, and that helped me develop my discipline in order to pay rent.

Do you remember how you felt when you really started to get into poetry? Do you think it has shaped you in any way? 

I felt like I had opened a door to the universe and the universe was within me. It was a glorious, addictive rush. I felt alive for the first time, and saw a way out of the depressive gloom that had shrouded my life up until that point.

In your magnificent poem “Ghosting the Ghetto” there is a sense of nostalgia throughout your words. What inspired you to write this poem? 

This poem is from my debut book, These Wild Houses. I had been commissioned by the Red Room Company to write a poem for their “Disappearing” project, which is tied to place. Around the same time I got a haircut from a Samoan hairdresser in Kings Cross—he asked me where I was from, and I told him I grew up around Warwick Farm. He laughed with a kind of surprised recognition and said, “oh shit, you from the ghetto.” I thought about that all the way home, my grandparent’s housing commission flat there, and how much was tied into the sense of being from a place people thought of as a ghetto, how much I had already forgotten, how necessary it is to love the things that make us who we are.

I get a strong sense that you pour a lot of yourself and your heritage into your work, which I admire very much, is there a piece that you feel very connected to aside from your other works?  

If I had to pick one poem in The Lost Arabs, I would pick “Factoids”. It’s a poem about my mother that adds a great deal of context, and dimension, to the portrait of her that I paint in my work. Through it, and more broadly through the whole book, I hope people understand that despite everything, I love her deeply.

Do you think having a social media presence has helped you with your confidence and drive as a writer? 

No. It did help me as a freelance writer to spread my work and gain a bit more recognition in the industry. Through Twitter in particular, editors would find my work and commission me to write.

If you could give some sound advice to the poets out there who look up to you, what would you tell them? 

My advice is practical and boring. Make sure you find a job, and develop skills for it, that is outside the realm of poetry. This is as much for your sanity as it is for your financial security. Read, read, read; revise, revise, revise. Above all else, be as kind as you can—not because this will help you on the road to publication, or to connect to your peers and readers, although that is undoubtedly true, but simply to be kind. It is its own reward.

What’s next for you?

God only knows. I’m doing a PhD on Arab Australian literature, and how we’ve been read. Aside from that, I’m looking to prose and hoping to write more short fiction, essays, and one day a novel.

Lastly, do you have any book recommendations?

Jericho Brown’s new book, The Tradition, is incredible. He’s had a massive impact on me as a poet and person, and I’m sure that will continue to be true. Invasive species by Marwa Helal is a vivid and innovative collection of poetry, and I also recently enjoyed the chapbook Rooftops in Karachi by Misbah. On the fiction front, I recommend The Lebs by Michael Mohammed, Lot by Bryan Washington, and Room for a Stranger by Melanie Cheng.

Have you read anything by Omar Sakr? Or will you be checking his work out now? Tell us in the comments below!

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