Emerging Queer Voices is a new CBC Arts essay series that gives space to up-and-coming LGBTQ writers

This past fall, I wrote the last edition of the column Queeries, which for seven years allowed me the great privilege of getting my own perspective on LGBTQ arts and culture out into the world. In that final essay, I promised I would find a way to continue the spirit of Queeries here at CBC Arts. And with a brand new series, premiering today, I plan to keep that promise.

Emerging Queer Voices is a new monthly column that will feature a different up-and-coming Canadian LGBTQ writer in each edition. Like Queeries, the column will focus on LGBTQ arts and culture "through a personal lens," this time, featuring a multitude of voices. It also includes promo art created by one of our favourite queer voices in art, Tim Singleton (thank you, Tim!).

To kick things off, we have two such writers: Shuli Grosman-Gray, who has offered a beautiful piece on the intersection of her identities and how it's affected her consumption of popular culture (particularly Harry Potter); and Lily Kazimiera, who considers how she saw her identity as a trans woman reflected in Sean Baker's Anora.

It was important for me to launch Emerging Queer Voices for a few reasons. For one, I know what a challenging landscape it has become in this country for writers, especially if you're just starting out. And it gets even harder if you want to write pieces that offer an uncompromising queer viewpoint, which is what this series intends to do. But also, more selfishly, I want to learn from the many talented queer writers in this country whose work I haven't had enough opportunity to get to know. I want them to help me (and CBC Arts readers, of course) gain perspective during increasingly challenging times for LGBTQ folks.

If you'd like to be considered as a writer for a future edition, please send an email introducing yourself that offers a clear pitch for what you'd like to write about and includes some writing samples to peter.knegt@cbc.ca. 

You can check out all of the currently published editions of Emerging Queer Voices below (we will update it as we go along).

"Understanding Anora as an accidental trans girl romantic tragicomedy," by Lily Kazimiera (January 2025)

How Sean Baker's portrait of a sex worker in over her head reflected Kazimiera's own experience of marginalized love. "What binds me as a trans woman to [Anora]'s ordeal, however, is not this association, but the way our identities inform our access to love," writes Kazimiera. Read the whole essay here.

"How I learned to embrace the intersections of my identity by finally enrolling in Hogwarts," by Shuli Grosman-Gray (January 2025)

Grosman-Gray grew up thinking she was too cool for Harry Potter, but it turned out he was just the hero she needed. She writes about "cracking open the door to a party I'm 20 years late to, where the host of the party has since taken the stage to reveal an exceptionally disappointing left (or, in this case, hard right) turn in her politics." Read the whole essay here.