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 Previously unpublished works by writers such as Margiad Evans and Ken Etheridge appear alongside better known favourites.

Bringing together the best of Wales' review-essays, including a comparison of new editions of nature classics, 'Back to the Land' by Pippa Marland. The books under review, Thomas Firbank's I Bought a Mountain and Margiad Evans' Autobiography take contrasting blustering and humble approaches to stepping over the sub/urban doorstep into nature. A showcase of new nonfiction, previewing forthcoming titles from some of Wales' key English-language publishers, exploring books on anti-Welsh media vitriol covering the early Manic Street Preachers, and historical flooding and the riches of an Eton-owned Benedictine fishery on the Gwent Levels. In original fiction: a wonderful story about a teenage boy on the cusp of bodily and emotional change, 'Trout', by Satterday Shaw, and a second, finely crafted story about the effect of geographical dislocation on teenage identity emergence, 'Another Place' by Philippa Holloway, set on Crosby beach. Plus Editorial by Gwen Davies and a new opinion feature, Last Page, by Richard Lewis Davies, in which the writers note that magazines in Wales are undergoing a transition, during which readers and subscribers will need to step up to the plate if a commitment to expressing – without interference - our particular place and time, is to be maintained. EDITORIAL Half-in, half-out Gwen Davies NONFICTION Bears at the Fridge: From Goldcliff to Whitson Preview extract from This Stolen Land by Marsha O'Mahony The Kinnock Factor: The Manics and Anti-Welshness Edited abridged preview from International Velvet by Neil Collins FICTION Another Place Story by Philippa Holloway Trout Story by Satterday Shaw ESSAYS Dark Formula Timothy Laurence Marsh on why reckless travel writing matters Books for Alien Girls JL George's personal and practical reflections on the role neurodivergence can and should play when writing fiction REVIEW-ESSAYS Back to the Land Pippa Marland on two nature memoir classics, one of hubristic bluster, the other humbly receptive 'Queer Old Codgers' Claire Pickard on the portrayal of highly nuanced gay identities and history in recent nonfiction titles and a major short story anthology THE LAST PAGE Back to the Future Richard Lewis Davies on how a culture with ambition needs critics and readers

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.

Chloe enters the local talent show, seeking fame, fortune and a ticket out of town. Meanwhile, her mother, Angie, wakes up hungover on the morning of her fourth wedding day. William ponders his impending autism diagnosis through the lenses of Descartes and Hollywood heartthrob Clive Owen. Jimmy, the hot-headed proprietor of a firework shop, rages at the emergence of a rival store, as his ex-wife considers the existential ramifications of her uncanny resemblance to TV cleaning personality Kim Woodburn. Local Fires sees debut writer Joshua Jones turn his acute focus to his birthplace of Llanelli, South Wales. Sardonic and melancholic, joyful and grieving, these multifaceted stories may be set in a small town, but they have reach far beyond their locality. From the inertia of living in an ex-industrial working-class area, to gender, sexuality, toxic masculinity and neurodivergence, Jones has crafted a collection versatile in theme and observation, as the misadventures of the town's inhabitants threaten to spill over into an incendiary finale. In this stunning series of interconnected tales, fires both literal and metaphorical, local and all-encompassing, blaze together to herald the emergence of a singular new Welsh literary voice.

This international edited collection contributes to knowledge about the geographies of sexualities experienced and imagined in rural spaces. The book draws attention to the heterogeneity of rural contexts and the diversity of meanings about sexualities within and across these spaces. The collection examines four key themes. First, ‘Intimacies and Institutions’ focuses on how intimate relationships are governed by societal, discursive and institutional structures, and regulated by social, political and legal frames of citizenship and belonging. The chapters present historical and contemporary case studies of the constitution and management of intimate sexual lives and relationships in rural and non-metropolitan spaces. Second, ‘Communities’ explores how sexual identities are socially-constructed and relationally-performed in rural communities, scrutinizing the complex interplay of belonging and alienation, inclusion and exclusion, for sexual subjects and communities within rural spaces. Analyzing films, literature and interviews, the chapters examine sexuality and community, and “queer” notions of rural family and community. Third, ‘Mobilities’ examines movement/migration at different scales. Cross-national data provides insights into similarities and differences in rural migration and homemaking for lesbians, gay men and same-sex families. The chapters consider how movement, coming out and memories of time and place inflect home, identity and belonging for rural lesbians and gay men. Fourth, ‘Production and Consumption’ investigates the commodification of rural sexualities. The chapters interrogate the management of animal bodies and sexualities in industrial agriculture for consumer pleasure and commercial ends; how heterosexuality and sexual relations are transacted in mining communities; and the global commodification of rural masculine sexualities. This book is timely. It provides important new insights about ruralities and sexualities, filling a gap in theoretical and empirical understandings about how sexualities in diverse rural spaces are given meaning. This collection begins the processes of furthering discussion and knowledge about the inherently dynamic and constantly changing nature of the rural and the multiple, varied and complex sexual subjectivities lived through corporeal experiences and virtual and imagined lives.

‘One of the most important books about gay culture in recent times’ The Quietus Long-listed for the Polari First Book Prize In 1984 the pulsing electronics and soft vocals of Smalltown Boy would become an anthem uniting gay men. A month later, an aggressive virus, HIV, would be identified and a climate of panic and fear would spread across the nation, marginalising an already ostracised community. Yet, out of this terror would come tenderness and 30 years later, the long road to gay equality would climax with the passing of same sex marriage. Paul Flynn charts this astonishing pop cultural and societal U-turn via the cultural milestones that effected change—from Manchester’s self-selection as Britain’s gay capital to the real-time romance of Elton John and David Furnish’s eventual marriage. Including candid interviews from major protagonists, such as Kylie, Russell T Davies, Will Young, Holly Johnson and Lord Chris Smith, as well as the relative unknowns crucial to the gay community, we see how an unlikely group of bedfellows fought for equality both front of stage and in the wings. This is the story of Britain’s brothers, cousins and sons. Sometimes it is the story of their fathers and husbands. It is one of public outrage and personal loss, the (not always legal) highs and the desperate lows, and the final collective victory as gay men were final recognised, as Good As You.