PRESENTED BY GIRAMONDO PUBLISHING & NEWCASTLE WRITERS FESTIVAL

The book will be launched by the poet Keri Glastonbury at The Lock-Up.

Copies of How to Be Between can be purchased on the night through event booksellers MacLean’s, alongside Glastonbury’s Newcastle Sonnets (Giramondo, 2018).

This event is free, but RSVP is essential. Please register through Eventbrite and clicking here to attend.

ABOUT HOW TO BE BETWEEN

Young women’s bodies are relentlessly scrutinised and judged, so for most, the appearance of facial hair is a traumatic experience – unnatural, unfeminine, unwanted. But what happens when a female-assigned person decides to embrace their facial hair? In How to Be Between, Bastian Fox Phelan explores how something as seemingly trivial as facial hair can act as a catalyst for a never-ending series of questions about the self. What happens when we accept our bodies as they are? What freedoms are gained by deciding to pursue an authentic sense of self, and what are the costs? As Bastian navigates adolescence and young adulthood, they meet many people who ask, ‘Who, or what, are you?’

Written with a tender sense of compassion and openness to experience, Phelan’s memoir charts a young activist and writer’s life as they find their voice through political action, publishing zines and playing music. An exploration of youthful anxiety, medical discourse and shifting identities, Bastian Fox Phelan’s memoir shines a light on what it means to find joy, resilience and radical self-acceptance in a body that refuses to fit within gender binaries.

ABOUT BASTIAN FOX PHELAN

Bastian Fox Phelan is a writer, musician and zine maker living in Mulubinba Newcastle on Awabakal land. Their zines, including cult classics Ladybeard and How to Be Alone, are held in collections around the world, and they have worked with the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and National Young Writers’ Festival on major zine fair events. Bastian’s writing has been published in journals including Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin, Archer and The Lifted Brow, and they make music as part of dream-pop duo Moonsign. How to Be Between is their first book.

ABOUT KERI GLASTONBURY

Keri Glastonbury is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle. Her poems have been widely published in magazines and collections. She has been the recipient of the Australia Council’s BR Whiting Residency in Rome and an Asialink Literature Residency in India. Her poetry collection Newcastle Sonnets was published by Giramondo in 2018, and shortlisted for the 2019 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry. Her previous collections include Grit Salute (Papertiger, 2012).

Supported by the City of Newcastle’s Community Support Grants Program.