‘Queers Read This is a literature event series that isn’t boring.’

Co-curated by Richard Porter and Isabel Waidner, in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

“If there were a literary avant-garde that were relevant now, it would be what the queers and their allies are doing, at the intersections, across disciplines. This avant-garde would be inclusive, racially and culturally diverse, migrants galore, predominately but not exclusively working-class, transdisciplinary, (gender)queer and politically clued up (left).” Isabel Waidner

Liberating the Canon (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2018) is an anthology capturing the contemporary emergence of radically innovative and nonconforming literatures in the UK and beyond. Historically, sociopolitical marginalisation and avant-garde aesthetics have not come together in UK literature, counterintuitively divorcing outsider experience and formal innovation. Bringing together intersectional identity and literary innovation, LTC is designed as an intervention against the normativity of literary publishing contexts and the institution ‘Innovative Literature’ as such. More widely, if literature, any literature, can act as a mode of cultural resistance and help imagine a more progressive politics in Tory Britain and beyond, it is this.

Liberating the Canon is edited by Isabel Waidner, and includes contributors working at the intersections of prose, poetry, art, performance, indie publishing and various subcultural contexts: Mojisola Adebayo, Jess Arndt (US), Richard Brammer, Victoria Brown, SJ Fowler, Juliet Jacques, Sara Jaffe (US), Roz Kaveney, R. Zamora Linmark (US), Mira Mattar, Seabright D. Mortimer, Nat Raha, Nisha Ramayya, Rosie Snajdr, Timothy Thornton, Isabel Waidner, Joanna Walsh and Eley Williams.

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“This is Publishing and Writing as Borderline Activism” — An Interview With Isabel Waidner by Thom Cuell, Minor Literature[s]

“Liberating the Canon: Intersectionality and Innovation in Literature” — Introduction by Isabel Waidner, 3:AM Magazine

“I’m besotted with this beguiling, hilarious, rollocking, language-metamorphosing novel. The future of the queer avant-garde is safe with Isabel Waidner.” Olivia Laing

*Gaudy Bauble was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2018*

Gaudy Bauble stages a glittering world populated by GoldSeXUal StatuEttes, anti-drag kings, Gilbert&George-like lesbians, maverick detectives, a transgender army equipped with question-mark-shaped helmets, and birds who have dyke written all over them. Everyone interferes with the plot. No one is in control of the plot. Surprises happen as a matter of course: A faux research process produces actual results. Hundreds of lipstick marks reanimate a dying body. And the Deadwood-to-Dynamo Audience Prize goes to whoever turns deadestwood into dynamost. Gaudy Bauble stages what happens when the disenfranchised are calling the shots. Riff-raff are running the show and they are making a difference.

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Selected reviews:

“Toothsome Prose: A round-up of experimental fiction” by Rosie Snajdr, The Times Literary Supplement

“Vanguard Collectibles: Isabel Waidner’s Gaudy Bauble” by MH, 3:AM Magazine

“Back to the literary future” by Michael Caines, The Times Literary Supplement

Published excerpts:

Berfrois

The Quietus

Minor Literature[s]