Presented by writer Isabel Waidner at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Class, Queers and the Avant-Garde was an event interrogating queerness and class in interdisciplinary writing and publishing in the UK, featuring presentations by Mojisola Adebayo, Ray Filar, Roz Kaveney, Huw Lemmey, and Kashif Sharma-Patel, in May 2019.

Departing from a new text by Waidner commissioned by the ICA on the occasion of the I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Kathy Acker exhibition (1 May – 5 August 2019), Class, Queers and the Avant-Garde explored the ongoing marginalisation of interdisciplinary working class, LGBTQI+, Black and POC writers in relation to the historical elitism of the British publishing establishment. The rise of alternative publishing and community-building practices (e.g. The 87 Press, Montez Press, Dostoyevsky Wannabe) which underpin the current moment were also discussed.

“Class, Queers and the Avant-Garde“, commissioned essay by Isabel Waidner, Institute of Contemporary Arts

“Class, queers and the avant-garde in new British writing with Caspar Heinemann and Isabel Waidner” by Isabel Waidner, AQNB

“Review: Class, Queers and the Avant-Garde at the ICA” by Polly Hember, Decorating Dissidence

“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