While Spanish-Filipino-Australian writer and performer Angela Serrano spent the majority of her 2017 fellowship at Melbourne’s Wheeler Centre working on queer erotic novella Their Dirty, Secret, Sovereignties, it would be a mistake to assume that it’s all about sex.
“I’m mainly interested in intimacy,” she says, admirably taking time out to speak to SBS Sexuality while in the midst of dealing with a flooded apartment. “I don’t really want to say ‘love’, because it then becomes this mushy, saccharine kind of overused word. Everyone says love these days, ‘I love that outfit,’ or, ‘I love this thing I saw on TV’. It has lost, I think, its subversive and revolutionary powers.”
Instead, she wants to explore that liminal space between love and sex, those first exploratory flushes. “The words I try to write, whether it’s in my poetry, some of which is erotic, or my short fiction, I try to look deeply into what it means when skin stops being skin and becomes something that brings two people together. What it means when people connect on that level, what leads to this and what then?”
Serrano – whose poetry collection Else But a Madness is published by vagabond Press and who regularly appears in queer magazine Archer as well as literary journals Overland and The Lifted Brow – will be a guest of this year’s Emerging Writers’ Festival (EWF). Appearing on two panels, Speakeasy: Sex at the Brunswick Mechanics Institute will see her explore erotic writing, desire, and sex and gender fluidity alongside non-binary dragtivist Dani Weber and queer studies scholar and writer Dion Kagan. She will also join Victorian Premier’s People’s Choice award-winning author Alison Evans and writer, performer and composer Kim Ho for Lunchtime Lit: Writing Queer Characters at the State Library Victoria.
A proud millennial, Their Dirty, Secret, Sovereignties sees protagonists Bridget, a closeted white woman who lives in Brighton, drawn to Angelette, a club dancer and woman of colour, via the medium of Instagram. “I wanted to talk about what happens when they meet and realise they are attracted to each other,” says Serrano. “Angelette is not me, but she’s a little bit inspired by my life experiences.”
Serrano says her sex education was heteronormative. “It was always about when the penis enters the vagina. That’s sex. And I was like, ‘well, what about oral sex?’ Is it or is it not? What about a finger? Then you think about something like women having sex. Is that sex, or is that sexy? And it absolutely is, I just want to say that, and I hope that my writing can help show how it is so.”
Serrano describes her first sexual encounter with another woman as spontaneous and confusing. “I was so awkward and she was much more experienced than I was… it was pleasant and enjoyable but it was something that made me really think about what sex is, and what it means to sexually connect with someone, and what sex is when you take out the penis. Because that’s something that’s used against women.”
Serrano says she’s heartened by the platform given to queer writers by festivals like EWF and many of Melbourne’s performance spaces. “There are so many great opportunities for young queer people in Australia at the moment. Obviously much more can be done, but it’s really cool to see and I wish I’d hopped onto it sooner. ”
Landing the Wheeler Centre fellowship on her second application was a big deal for Serrano, who says that it can sometimes be overwhelming, carving out her own space in this thriving landscape. “I’m very grateful for them taking a chance on me and my writing.”
As vibrant as her Instagram presence is, she notes that social media can be something of a double-edged sword. “Sometimes I hate it because I look around and so many people are doing great things that I compare myself to them and between trolls and feeling like I’m not good enough, I’m always having this impostor syndrome.”
It’s not all bad, however. “Then I also see people doing really inspiring work, reaching out and having all these wonderful and inspiring messages, showing that queerness is smart and funny, compelling and beautiful in all its myriad forms.”
The Emerging Writers’ Festival runs from June 19-29. For more info or to book tickets, click here. To find out more about Angela Serrano, click here or follow her on Instagram.
