Queer Square Mile

Kirsti Bohata, Mihangel Morgan, Huw Osborne, Kirsti Bohata, Mihangel Morgan, Huw Osborne

• Publisher: Parthian Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781913640248
• eBook ISBN: 9781913640255

QUEER SQUARE MILE: Queer Short Stories from Wales Edited by Kirsti Bohata, Mihangel Morgan and Huw Osborne This ground-breaking volume makes visible a long and diverse tradition of queer writing from Wales. Spanning genres from ghost stories and science fiction to industrial literature and surrealist modernism, these are stories of love, loss and transformation. In these stories gender refuses to be fixed: a dashing travelling companion is not quite who he seems in the intimate darkness of a mail coach, a girl on the cusp of adulthood gamely takes her father's place as head of the house, and an actor and patron are caught up in dangerous game-playing. In the more fantastical tales there are talking rats, flirtations with fascism, and escape from a post-virus 'utopia'. These are stories of sexual awakening, coming out and redefining one's place in the world. Release and a certain heady license may be found in the distant cities of Europe or north Africa, but the stories are for the most part located in familiar Welsh settings – a schoolroom, a provincial town, a mining village, a tourist resort, a sacred island. The intensity of desire, whether overt, playful, or coded, makes this a rich and often surprising collection that reimagines what being queer and Welsh has meant in different times and places. The first anthology of its kind in Wales, which finally sheds light on a largely hidden queer cultural history with the careful selection of over 40 short stories (1837-2018). New translations of Kate Roberts, Mihangel Morgan, Jane Edwards, Pennar Davies and Dylan Huw make available their compelling stories for the first time to a non-Welsh speaking readership. Previously unpublished works by writers such as Margiad Evans and Ken Etheridge appear alongside better known favourites.

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Editors
• Title Page
• Introduction
• LOVE, LOSS, AND THE ART OF FAILURE
• The Treasure – Kate Roberts
• The Kiss – Glyn Jones
• The Fraying of the Thread – Kathleen Freeman
• Christmas – Kate Roberts
• The Mistake – Kathleen Freeman
• A Modest Adornment – Margiad Evans
• Red Earth, Cyrenaica – Stevie Davies
• Knowledge – Glyn Jones
• Eucharist – John Sam Jones
• The Antidote – Kathleen Freeman
• An Artistic Mission – Emyr Humphreys
• Go Play with Cucumbers – Crystal Jeans
• Without Steve – David Llewelyn
• all the boys – Thomas Morris
• A Cheerful Note – Emyr Humphreys
• DISORDERLY WOMEN
• The Conquered – Dorothy Edwards
• The Doctor’s Wife – Rhys Davies
• Parting – Jane Edwards
• A Most Moderate Lust – Siân James
• The Romantic Policewoman – Rhys Davies
• The Dead Bear – Crystal Jeans
• TRANSFORMATIONS
• A Cut Below – Jon Gower
• Posting a Letter – Mihangel Morgan
• Blind Date – Jane Edwards
• One June Night: A Sketch of an Unladylike Girl – Amy Dillwyn
• Nightgown – Rhys Davies
• The Conquest, or a Mail Companion – Anonymous (I. H.)
• Wigs, Costumes, Masks – Rhys Davies
• My Lord’s Revenge – Anonymous
• HAUNTINGS AND OTHER QUEER FANCIES
• Miss Potts and Music – Margiad Evans
• The Collaborators – Anonymous
• The Haunted Window – Margiad Evans
• A House that Was – Bertha Thomas
• The Man and the Rat – Pennar Davies
• Nobody Dies… Nobody Lives… – Ken Etheridge
• The Fishboys of Vernazza – John Sam Jones
• QUEER CHILDREN
• The Water Music – Glyn Jones
• The Formations – Dylan Huw
• Strawberry Cream – Siân James
• The Wonder at Seal Cave – John Sam Jones
• Kissing Nina – Deborah Kay Davies
• INTERNATIONALISMS
• Fear – Rhys Davies
• The Stars Above the City – Lewis Davies
• Love Alone Remains – Mihangel Morgan
• Muscles Came Easy – Aled Islwyn
• The Largest Bull in Europe – Kate North
• CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX
• AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• Modern Wales by Parthian Books
• Copyright