Welcome to the first series of the QUEER AS podcast where we’re yarning with queer Indigenous artists and creative practitioners about their work across the public imaginary.

For our fourth episode, we're catching up with award-winning Mununjali Yugambeh author, editor, and educator, Ellen van Neerven. EvN‘s first book, Heat and Light (UQP, 2014; 2023), a novel-in-stories, was the recipient of the David Unaipon Award, the Dobbie Literary Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Indigenous Writers Prize. Their first poetry collection Comfort Food (UQP, 2016) won the Tina Kane Emergent Award and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards Kenneth Slessor Prize. Throat (UQP, 2020) was the recipient of Book of the Year, the Kenneth Slessor Prize and the Multicultural Award at 2021 NSW Literary Awards and the inaugural Quentin Bryce Award. Personal Score: Sport, Culture, Identity (UQP, 2023), a book that weaves history, memoir, journalism and poetry, received the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non Fiction and is available on Turtle Island through Two Dollar Radio. They are the editor of several collections, most recently Shapeshifting: First Nations Lyric Nonfiction with Jeanine Leane.

For a full transcript of this episode, and links to artists and works discussed, visit: https://queer-as.org/a-podcast/evn/

QUEER AS is part of the Saving Lives research program that recalls and centres the power of queer Indigenous artistic thinking and creativity. This anticolonial podcast is sponsored by the Australian Research Council and in partnership with IndigenousX and the Centre for Global Indigenous Futures.

QUEER AS is hosted by Wiradjuri trans/non-binary creative artist and Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies Sandy O'Sullivan, with settler trans/non-binary researcher, musicker, and radio maker Dr Han Reardon-Smith. Theme music is also by Sandy and Han, and audio editing and podcast production is by Han. Cover art is by Wiradjuri trans/non-binary artist Dylan Barnes.