Category: Stories

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Blog / Features / NEWS / READING / Shifting Traditions / Stories

Naa’hor Pa-at

by Chroma Chola // illustration by Marko Emigrantov_na Kvirenko /// A coffee cup lay on a stack of charts, its contents spiraling outwards. Computer screens nearby were beeping rapidly. One of the scientists picked up the coffee cup, emptied it in one gulp and wrote a report on his iPad.

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Blog / Features / NEWS / READING / Shifting Traditions / Stories

POEM I DON’T WANT TO WRITE

by aabbchot aabbaadd aabbswallow // illustration by Jespa Jacob Smith /// I’m trapped in my silence, – I don’t tell anyone about my alarm, – I know why I am in this situation, – thoughts constantly recur, remind me. I’ve developed and actioned plans,…

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Blog / READING / Shifting Traditions / Stories

Call: Shifting Traditions

Submission deadline: December 31st, 2019
We accept fictional and biographical work. Submissions can be written, drawn, photo essays, made into a film, song, or installation. Please get in touch if you have a certain idea, but are not sure if it fits the topic or if the form will work.

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#OUR_STORY / Blog / Features / READING / Stories

WHEN OUR MOVEMENT BECAME THEIR CAUSE

TEXT BY: Nikola Italo // Argentina

In Argentina we are living through a very particular but incredibly significant course of events. The parliament (Congress, to be specific) has decided to start the project of a new law: the decriminalization of abortion.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

The Pool

TEXT BY: Anna Favero // Italy/Germany || ILLUSTRATION BY: Verena Spilker // Germany

It was like diving in pools of liquid past. Suddenly I’m eighteen, an awful glass of amaro and a cigarette in my hands, listening shyly to my brother’s…
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A Bed Of Stones

TEXT BY: Chroma Curious // India || ILLUSTRATION BY: Tigrowna // Germany

She put her concerns aside and scanned the scenario. On her left was a river and to her right was a small cave.
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20th Century Girl

TEXT BY: Shawna Virago // USA || ILLUSTRATION BY: Dixie Turner // UK/Germany

Over coffee and onion rings, we chatted away, sharing our histories, tracing our connections, discovering our lines of intersection and where we were different, as we unburdened much to each other.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

Death on the Beach

TEXT BY: Michael Ampersant // Netherlands || ILLUSTRATION BY: Heather Sinclair // Germany

Shy as I was, I would always make sure that I wasn’t entering the wrong cabin, or walking in on somebody forgetting to lock the door who would then be standing there with his pants half-down and his tiny dick, looking embarrassed or angry and later show up in my dreams.
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Travelogue – SAFE project

TEXT AND ILLUSTRATION BY: Julia Lama // Spain

Not so long ago I traveled from Spain to Poland to take part in a youth training, where we learned how to raise awareness on sexuality (sexual education), assertiveness, feminism and equality through methodologies of non-formal education.
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The Journey across Southern Island

TEXT BY: Alexander Opicho // Kenya || ILLUSTRATION BY: Beldan Selzen // Amsterdam/New York

We are now driving past Bukolobi Night Club, towards the football pitch where the Al Shabab terrorist once attacked. We are sure no policeman is following us. Uganda police have that type of over-confidence of having been guerilla; they know that no woman can defy their order.
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Orphan

TEXT BY: V. P. Gangadharan // India || ILLUSTRATION BY: Alann De Vuyst // Belgium

It implies a blatant denial of parturition to offspring, a crass refusal of rational identity from a progenitor, making of an anthropoid creature void of ‘in-your-face’ societal stamp, called for human race.
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Send me postcards and books

TEXT BY: Sneha Rooh // India || ILLUSTRATION BY: Falco Verholen // Netherlands

Send me postcards and books
Your clothes for swapping
And all the slicing words that repeat
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Call Me A Boy – My journey into music and manhood

TEXT BY: Faris Saad // Malaysia || ILLUSTRATION BY: Tom Moore // Germany

“My bandmates assured me that no one in the straight cis-male crowd would care, and if they did, fuck them, selamba je. Even if I lost everything else, I would still have my core group of friends who accepted me as my handsome self.”
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Uncle Joe

video by:Zhen Yee Khor // Malaysia

A father talks about getting drafted to fight in a war when he was still a kid, coming home to find out that everyone thinks that what he did was wrong and shows how even if it’s against all odds, he became a loving father and husband that respects and cherishes all people, especially his gay son.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

Clean

TEXT BY: Norman Belanger // USA || ILLUSTRATION BY: Julia Lama // Spain

“And there it is again, the question I must answer. It says right on my profile: “POZ” But who reads anymore?”
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Time’s up

TEXT BY: Stella Andrada Kasdovasili // Hungary/Greece || ILLUSTRATION BY: Ranafarba // France

“She talked for an hour or so. Told me everything. How everyone got divided. Everything got very complicated. Identities clashed. First came the men, then gay men, then trans men, then trans women, then women, then lesbian women, bisexuals (they really had it ugly, nobody ever believed they were even a thing), asexuals, metrosexuals, non-binary, queer. Riots, protests, violence in all possible ways and forms.”
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Darling Fitch

MULTIMEDIA PROJECT BY: Darling Fitch // Germany/USA

“Arising from the cesspool of Berlin’s queer party scene, Darling Fitch’s A Stranger Sound is a dark yet ultimately affirming transgender coming-of-age story.”
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Louder

TEXT BY: Catriona // UK || ILLUSTRATION BY: Julia Lama // Spain

“I identify with being bisexual, as opposed to pansexual, as I see being bi as being sexually and romantically attracted both to people of a different gender to you and to people of the same gender.”
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Stop Talking, Start Doing:

My experience with the eBay Startup Cup 2018
TEXT & PHOTOS: Lazar Mikov // Germany / Macedonia

“If someone told me that our team would generate revenue on the first day of our business I would have laughed in disbelief. Yet that’s exactly what happened at…”
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

Another Coming Out Story

TEXT BY: Norman Belanger // USA || ILLUSTRATION BY: Tigrowna // Germany

Howard Roarke laughed. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff…he laughed at the thing which had happened to him that morning, and the things which now lay ahead….
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A QUEER DILEMMA

TEXT BY: T.M. Brown // Ireland || ILLUSTRATION BY: Tom Moore // Germany

“If the theory is true that our formative years are what made us queers – what difference does that”
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The Group

TEXT BY: Nod Ghosh // New Zealand || ILLUSTRATION BY: Falco Verholen // Netherlands

She left the group before I did, even though my partner joined before me. A sanctuary for people like us, the group should have been somewhere we both felt safe…
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

BENEVOLENT WINGED ANGEL

TEXT BY: Aabbchot aabbaadd Aabbswallow // Australia

Aaabbchot Aabbaadd Aabbswallow, tall body hair free callow, dreaming again of being naked, exploring gorgeous creature,….
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The Christening

TEXT BY: Jocelyne Rigal // Ireland || ILLUSTRATION BY: Tigrowna // Germany

I broke the uneasy pause which followed, with a statement which boomed throughout the car. ‘But that’s nothing to worry about!’ I said, making a wide gesture as an invitation for tolerance.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

My Two Mothers

TEXT BY: Nyar Afrika // Kenya || ILLUSTRATION BY: Elizabeth Watkin // USA

My mothers are two women in love and they raised me just fine. They are the best example of a prefect family and I am forever thankful that they taught me how to respect everyone else’s identities and sexual orientation without bias.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

WHITE DREAMING ON MOUNT WARNING

TEXT BY: Aabbchot aabbaadd Aabbswallow // Australia || ILLUSTRATION BY: Lekouzinthomas // France

I am dreaming about men. I am dreaming about women. I am dreaming i have tits walking across the nearby highway, walking along the local street with busy endless small shops. I am dreaming this recurring unresolving dream….
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Exposed

TEXT BY: Nyar Afrika // Kenya || ILLUSTRATION BY: Elizabeth Watkin // USA

I want this mysterious woman to have me. To take me in a way known to her and make me moan endlessly. To touch me in places that crave for touch; a woman’s touch and make me moan.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

If I Should Fall Asleep – CW: Suicide

TEXT BY: Cassia Gaden Gilmartin // Ireland || ILLUSTRATION BY: Avital Yomdin // Germany

It’s nine o’clock, evening but not yet night, and the sky is the colour of peaches. Colours, rather. A pinkish red in the high places and yellow nearer the horizon, as if the sun’s split open and leaked all over the sky.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

HOMOPHOBIC POEM NO. 8

TEXT BY: T.M. Brown // Ireland || ILLUSTRATION BY: Tom Moore // Germany

Are Gay People Artistic Because They’re Gay Or Gay Because They’re Artistic?, Either Way It Seems A Strange Conclusion To Reach And To Say The Least Over Simplistic.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

What is OUR_STORY?

Storytelling is one of the oldest and most accessible tools used to share culture and experiences over generations. With…
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

a lake, a sea so far

TEXT + ILLUSTRATION BY: E. C. Schuster // Germany

They are a young, queer lesbian based in Germany. They are a student of English literature, an activist, and work as an academic researcher and freelance journalist.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

Eat, Pray, Puke – CW: bulimia

TEXT BY: Nate Eileen Tjoeng // Singapore || ILLUSTRATION BY: Falco Verholen // Netherlands

My name is Beverly. I am 29 years old, I have bulimia and I have lived purging what I consume for 13 years. It all started when I was a plump kid at 16. The mockery and scorn tore me apart.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

In Ireland and in Love

TEXT BY: Jocelyne Rigal // Ireland || ILLUSTRATION BY: Lea Daniel // Ireland

How do you heal a broken heart? Mine had been reduced to shreds by Mairead, an out and proud lesbian I met at work. Mairead, all hoodies and short hair, didn’t take my feelings for her seriously because I’d had two babies
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

Nyelethi

text by: Nyar Afrika // Kenya || photo by: Ambika Thompson // Canada

That surprises me. She never talks about us when we are together. To her, I am this dirty little secret, something she enjoys having by her side. I am okay with that. Personally, I am not out looking for anything that would tie me down.
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#OUR_STORY / READING / Stories

Quest as in Question or Quest as in Journey

text by: Julius // Trinidad and Tobago || illustration by: Elizabeth Watkin // USA

I stared into his dark eyes. I was washed with pure hate. He hated me. I had no idea why. Three words separated me from gaining his acceptance. I am gay. Those words rang in my ear and danced in the whirlpool of thoughts that strangled my mind. He hated me.

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