Muswell Press reveals contributors for anthology in memory of trans daughter

Muswell Press has revealed the contributors for its new writing collection Queer Life, Queer Love, featuring 43 stories, poems, essays and pieces of flash fiction, dedicated to its publisher's trans daughter who passed away last year.

The book will be published to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20th November and Transgender Awareness week, which runs from 13th to 20th November. It is dedicated to the memory of Lucy/Jack Reynolds, the trans child of Sarah Beal (pictured together), publisher at Muswell Press, and niece/nephew of co-publisher Kate Beal. A student, musician, and an advocate of LGBTQI rights, she died in March 2020 at the age of 20.

The collection celebrates global queer writing from Africa to America, India to New Zealand, and Jamaica to Ireland. The publisher said the collection "explores characters, stories and experiences beyond the mainstream" and features "the fascinating, the forbidden, the subversive and even the mundane, in essence, the view from outside".

The majority of the anthology introduces works from new and emerging writers but also includes previously unpublished contributions from established writers including Isabel Costello, Jonathan Kemp, Katlego Kai Kolanyabe-Kesupile, Fran Lock, Tanaka Mhishi and Richard Scott.

Editors Golnoosh Nour and Matt Bates said: "This beautifully daring collection is to honour a young, lost queer life, but also to create more space to encourage and salute the diversity of queer writing, and to celebrate the richness of queer life experience."

The writers featured in the collection are: 

Katlego Kai Kolanyane-Kesupile
Jonathan Kemp
Rosy Adams
Richard Scott
Jon Ransom
Fran Lock
Kesiena Boom
Julia Bell
Sal Harris
Tanaka Mhishi
Manish Chauhan
Kathryn Hemmann
Dale Booton
Honor Gavin
Leon Craig
Aoïfe Hannah
Erica Gillingham
Cathleen Davies
Andrew F Giles
Serge Neptune
Wayne Blackwood
Debra Lavery
Francis Fox
Len Lukowski
Isabel Costello
Kay Inkle
Harry Rey
Victoria Richards
Claire Orrange
Rosanna McGlone
Nathan Evans
Cal Legorburo
Marilyn Smith
Tony Peake
David Woodhead
Margot Douaihy
Laura Vincent
Paul Whittering
Tom Bland
Giulia Medaglini
Libro Levi Bridgeman