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 Audio: As read by the author on Narratives, a Meanjin podcast.   I sat on the bed, staring at the phone like it had fangs about to dig into my skin. My cousin’s name was lit up like a flag. Dread pulsed in my chest. Here came the conversation I’d been avoiding for more than a decade. He now knew I liked sucking dick. I flicked my thumb over his name, tender as a blade, and watched it slide open. ‘Yeah, cuz,’ I said. ‘Shu, cuz, where are ya?’ He sounded like he’d just woken up, but only because […]

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT  

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

Dang, sorry. This is only available to a Meanjin subscriber. But we can fix that. It’s just $80 for print or $50 for digital. DIGITAL PRINT

The course of true love never did run smooth: especially, it seems, when that love comes wrapped in rainbow colours. Over the past decade 23 bills dealing with marriage equality, or the recognition of overseas same-sex marriages, have been introduced into the Australian Parliament.

I remembered I needed to read the book at about the time Tony Abbott told radio talk host Ray Hadley the best kind of energy policy was one that manufactured a partisan point of difference with Labor—and when a bunch of conservative politicians were out telling the voters not to trust politicians during the postal survey on same sex marriage. The book had come to me a few weeks earlier. A political friend had wandered past my desk and presented me with a paperback called The End of Politicians: Time for a Real Democracy. ‘I thought you might be interested in […]

When I was still doing my job, I noticed I had begun to explain myself. ‘I’m literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald … I run our coverage of books: commission book reviews, interview authors, report on the publishing industry.’ My title didn’t always draw blank looks from people I met outside the book world, but I was unconsciously taking pre-emptive action to avoid embarrassment. Strangers frequently told me they were keen readers of the Saturday books pages and envied my job, which they imagined as being paid to read books. I still played an important and beloved role in […]