CBC’s 18 reasons to be excited for LGBTQ arts and culture in 2018

Jan 3, 2018

Happy new queer: 18 reasons to be excited for LGBTQ arts and culture in 2018

By Peter Knegt · CBC Arts – January 2

Out with the 2017 best-of lists, in with the 2018 preview lists — and frankly, when it comes to anticipated LGBTQ film, TV, music and books, the latter sure was fun to compile. Say what you want about the state of the world, but the next 12 months seem likely to offer up enough queer cheer to get me excited to ride out the apocalypse.

It wasn’t easy to narrow down (so please excuse any omissions, and feel free to note what you’re excited for the comments), but here are 18 reasons why 2018 is already on track to be an epic year for LGBTQ arts and culture. (And this is only the stuff already on our radar…)

Sodom Road Exit

Vancouver’s Amber Dawn has a new book out this March, and if her Lambda Literary Award-winning novel Sub Rosa (2010), the Vancouver Book Award-winning memoir How Poetry Saved My Life (2013), and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize-nominated poetry collection Where the words end and my body begins (2015) have anything to say about it, it’s going to be a 2018 literary highlight. Set in the summer of 1990, Sodom Road Exit is described as “at once a compelling family melodrama and a lesbian supernatural thriller,” which is an unlikely genre blend that it’s easy to get behind.

I’m Afraid of Men

Speaking of very busy people, Canadian writer, musician and filmmaker Vivek Shraya is following up a big 2017 with a new book, I’m Afraid of Men. According to this interview with CBC Books, it’ll explore the writer’s experience with “toxic masculinity” and “reflect on its pervasive manifestations as sexual harassment and abuse, homophobia, transphobia and bullying.” Says Shraya: “With this book I really wanted to explore the lifelong pressures of masculinity I’ve endured, and the urgent need to reimagine traditional ideas about gender.” Penguin Canada will publish the book this fall.

Joshua Whitehead’s debut novel

This list has already made clear it’s going to be a notable year for LGBTQ Canadian literature, and here’s yet another reason why: not even a year after releasing poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer, Joshua Whitehead’s debut novel Jonny Appleseed will be out in April from our friends at Arsenal Pulp Press. Being marketed as “a unique, shattering vision of Indigenous life, full of grit, glitter and dreams,” the book follows the titular character, a young two-spirit/Indigiqueer “trying to find ways to live and love in the big city.”

Casey Plett’s debut novel

Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press annually offers many reasons to be excited for new LGBTQ lit, and 2018 is no exception. Windsor-based writer Casey Plett (who notably wrote this wonderful piece for CBC Arts a year ago this week) will see her debut novel Little Fish released through Arsenal come April. It follows Wendy Reimer, a 30-year-old trans woman in Winnipeg who comes across evidence that her late grandfather — a devout Mennonite farmer — might have been transgender himself. The book has already received quite the rave from Plett’s fellow trans author Meredith Russo: “I have never felt as seen, understood or spoken to as I did when I read Little Fish. Never before in my life. Casey remains one of THE authors to read if you want to understand the interior lives of trans women in this century.”

Read the CBC’s full “Happy New Queer” article