Queer Square Mile, Queer Short Stories from Wales Edited by K Bohata, M Morgan, & H Osborne

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Some how I expected a collection of short stories to be short and was surprised when these 600+ pages of writing thumped onto the doormat … turns out being Queer, Short, and from Wales is more common than I thought!

Without Steve, by David Llewelyn, is one of the most sorrowful

I had read all the boys by Thomas Morris back in 2020 in his own collection, and it was good to encounter it again.

It is hard to offer comments in summary of such an expansive collection - spanning almost 200 years it brings us work published from 1837 to 2021 it gives a longevity to Queer voices which is often denied or ignored, while rooting so many of the stories in rural and / or working class Wales counters narratives about Queer experience being the reserve of the metropolitan elites. (a foot note to this is currently re-watching This Life in which Warren’s story is all about that “escape” from Wales to the City)

 

Queer Life, Queer Love 2 Edited by M Bates, J Bell, S & K Beal

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This second anthology captures the same rich mix of writing as the first ...

Those that stuck in my mind included:

Can’t We Be Friends by Avi Ben-Zeev

The End of the Friend by Karen MacLeod

I Fell in Love with a Boy Who Then Blocked Me on Grindr by Stanley Iyanu

Studio by Amy Rider

A Luminous Republic by Andrés Barba translated by Lisa Dillman

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Minor spoilers...

The setting of the City of San Cristóbal surrounded by the forest creates a divide between “civilization” and “wilderness” or nature which plays into our experience of the events the unnamed narrator recalls.

That this widower, civil servant, step-father remains unnamed places them at the edge of the narrative, but as the events unfold it is increasingly clear they are no bystander – so are they trying to separate themselves for events that they were an active participant in?

This slight hiding of their identity also draws us in, makes it easier for us to read ourselves into their role, feel ourselves, uncomfortably, part of the unfolding drama.

The angst that runs through this story feels particularly sharp with the English translation coming in 2020 – so much unspoken fear came with COVID.

The ways in which the rumours about the Children grow, and turn towards panic, also shines a light on how much social media now acts to spin events out of control, the telling and sharing of a partial account of an event leads on and on in ways which are almost impossible to reign back in.

Seeing the corruption of the city we might look at the Children in contrast, a seeming innocence to them, playful even when their actions are doing harm, maybe a temptation to make saints of them. But it is unclear that they deserve such a status any more than they deserved the demonisation.

And so we come to reflect on the role of social institutions and accountability – is our narrator just a pen pushing cog in a machine or does he have agency and therein responsibility?

The Children die as an (unintended / unforeseen) consequence of actions of the authorities, but actions taken to protect the city, taken without regard for the impact on the Children – how many of the scandals we live with feel like this – Post Office, Hillsborough, the sad list could go on and on – and it is in this that Barba truly unsettles the reader ...

You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr

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The long arc of history and the passage of grief, hurt, cruelty, and shame down the generations make this an ambitious work – the task Damian Barr sets in meeting that ambition is a hard one.

With some spoilers…

The opening account of the British ‘Scorched Earth’ attack on a Boer Farm is horrific because of its claim, orderly, bureaucratic cruelty – this is not the frenzy of battle. And this is followed by the concentration camp – one of the earliest examples of this systematic dehumanising of a population, a people. The treatment of the white Boers is terrible, the were separate black camps where conditions were even worse.

This is history now beyond the reach of living memory, but Damian Barr brings it vividly to us in the stories of individuals, stories of women.

Moving forward in time the focus shifts to lives of black women living under Apartheid, living proud despite the oppression of the State and neglect of men. Complex women, real in their imperfections.

And then on again to Willem, post-Apartheid child, not living up to a step-father’s ideal of masculinity. Sent to a military training camp Willem finds intimacy with Geldenhuys. After attempting to escape, they are put into punishment cell. Willem’s Grandmother comes to the rescue just in time for Willem but too late for Geldenhuys.

The reveal at the end is the camp stood on the land of the farm where we began, run but descendent of the women we followed to the camp. This twists any assumptions we might have been holding about any easy binary between oppressor / oppressed – what went before can not justify what came after – where does reconciliation come, will the cycle of violence ever end?

This is unsettling, appropriately unsettling – and in that I think Damian Barr managed to write something worthy of the memories of those that have suffered across South Africa’s many generations.

How We Named The Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica

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NB: Includes Spoilers…

This novel sets the stories of Daniel and his late namesake Uncle side by side, separated in time yet finding themselves walking different paths. The tales of unfolding understandings of sexuality come to us piece by piece, which feels very authentic to the ways we learn to understand our own sexualities.

The younger Daniel is a student, paired with room mate Sam, they become friends and then even lovers, a blissful first year at University that takes a turn when Sam’s fledgling awareness of his sexuality takes a step back.

An email breaks the news to Daniel that Sam is ending their relationship, ending even their friendship.

A phone call breaks the news to Sam has died in an accident.

Heartbroken Daniel travels to Mexico to spend the summer with family their. During this time he learns move about the Uncle whose name he carries, including eventually that elder Daniel was also Gay.

In Mexico younger Daniel has a fling, but the grief for Sam prevents him being open to it being move, and when he communicates this the response is toxic and coercive.

There are moments when it can feel that this is heavy with the baggage of so many “bury your gays” plots – elder Daniel and Sam both dying young. That would be to miss the point, and the beauty, of this all – love and self-discovery are not always easy, but they are always essential.

I read this on the flight back from REG Conference in Bermuda – there is something intense and claustrophobic that feels suited to encountering this in a single session. Although there is a passage of time, and narratives occurring in different times, younger Daniel’s narration of it all his intense recollection of it.

The Forward Book of Poetry 2026

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I put tags in the following poems:

Anti-Hero by Isabelle Baafi

What I Know by Catherine-Esther Cowie

The World According to Your Mum Doing the Washing by Joshua Idehen

at least by Abeer Ameer

Mary Magdalene by Mae Diansangu

Basquait’s Delusion by Monica Minott

Animals by Theresa Muñoz

Good Friday by Andrés N. Ordorica

Naming the Trees by Ness Owen

The River by Pascale Petit

Toxic Shame in the Church by Brenda Hopkins

The key thing that Brenda Hopkins surfaces within this book is the difference between being ashamed of things you do and being ashamed of things you are.

So much in society, and even more in the church, tells us to be ashamed that we are gay (or LGBT+), in theory love the sinner hate the sin but it rarely comes across like that.

We all do things that we regret, an the shame that comes with that is in part protective, it is a part of learning lessons and not making the same mistakes again.

But when shame becomes attached who you are as a person there is no resolution.

To illustrate this Brenda Hopkins quotes James Alison, who is quoting a hypothetical God

“You are not. I did not create you. I only create heterosexual people. You are a defective heterosexual. Agree to be a defect and I’ll rescue you. But if you claim to be, then your very being is constructed over against me, and you are lost.”

It also made me reflect on my own journey with vocation, after they had stepped away Brenda recounts a conversation “He sighs… ‘no one said it was going to be easy’ … [she replied] ‘I didn’t leave because it was hard. I left because it was unhealthy.’” (p76)

I have many LGBT+ friends that are ordained, that have found ways to go on that journey, and in different ways it will have been really a hard journey for each of them. At times I struggle with that, I stepped away, giving up – I have to remember that for me it had become a toxic process, I was denying who I was, editing myself – and I could not go forward to make profound promises before God that would have been based on a pack of lies.

In naming the shame Brenda disempowers it.