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New Australian Masculinity

Tue 3 May 2022

Lech Blaine + Nevo Zisin + Omar Sakr + Benjamin Law

slq Auditorium 2, level 2, State Library

Main Festival

#Performances

#About the event

Duration: 60 minutes

So much of Australia’s identity is based around mateship and manhood. But how have these ideas helped and harmed generations of Australians? In what ways might they be outdated and how are they changing? Across poetry, fiction, memoir, journalism and activism, these writers explore – and explode – preconceptions about Australian masculinity.

Panel: Lech Blaine, Nevo Zisin, Omar Sakr
Chair: Benjamin Law

#Artists

Lech Blaine

Lech Blaine is a writer from country Queensland. He is the author of the memoir Car Crash and the Quarterly Essay Top Blokes: The Larrikin Myth, Class and Power. Lech regularly contributes essays to The Monthly.

Nevo Zisin

Nevo Zisin (they/them) is a queer, non-binary, Jewish writer, performer, activist and public speaker based in Naarm/ Melbourne. They run workshops in schools and professional development trainings in workplaces around transgender identities. Author of award-winning Finding Nevo (2017), a memoir on gender transition and The Pronoun Lowdown (2021) a useful guidebook on all things related to pronouns.

Their work has appeared in The Saturday Paper, NGV Magazine, Archer Magazine, Junkee, Kindred: A Queer Australian Young Adult Anthology, SBS, Hack Live and The Morning Show amongst others.

They are a mentor for The Pinnacle Foundation, one of Out for Australia's 30 Under 30 for 2019, an ambassador for both Wear It Purple and the Victorian Pride Centre as well as a member of the Gender Euphoria cast - Australia's largest all trans & gender diverse show on a main stage.

Omar Sakr

Omar Sakr is the author of two acclaimed poetry collections, These Wild Houses (Cordite Books) and The Lost Arabs (UQP). The Lost Arabs won the 2020 Prime Minister's Literary Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award, and the Colin Roderick Award. Omar is a widely published essayist and editor whose work has been translated into Arabic and Spanish. Born to Lebanese and Turkish Muslim migrants in Western Sydney, he lives there still. Son of Sin is his first novel.

Benjamin Law

Benjamin Law is the author of The Family Law (2010), Gaysia (2012), the Quarterly Essay 'Moral Panic 101' (2017) and editor of Growing Up Queer in Australia (2019). He also created and co-wrote three seasons of the award-winning SBS TV series The Family Law and the play Torch the Place for Melbourne Theatre Company. He's co-host of the national pop culture show Stop Everything on ABC Radio National.