In the middle of a pandemic, the US is opposing women’s basic human right to determine what happens to their bodies. The world appears to be marching backwards, not forwards, writes Amy Haddad. Unless you are a multilateral gender nerd like me you may not know that 2020 is the 20th anniversary of UN Security…
Read more
The supportive best friend. The tragic sad girl. We’ve seen characters from marginalised communities delivered straight from the production line, neatly packaged within these stereotypes for moral convenience. But Annie Easton, heroine of Shrill, proves something different is possible: a character who is equally flawed and inspiring. Watching Annie grow at a rate of fits…
Read more
The summer before my grandmother passed away, she visited me and my family in Australia. I sat with her one sunny afternoon as she told me about her life growing up in a Bangladeshi village and having an arranged marriage at the age of 12. I listened as she recounted how her father, my great-grandfather,…
Read more
The Lip team is pleased to announce the shortlist of the 2020 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. Plant Life – Tanya VavilovaArrow – Mia-Francesca McAuslanBaby Season – Vicky DaddoTouch Starve – Maude DaveySwampy – Emily WhiteEarth House – Hollen Singletonhere/after – Laura McCluskeyAnd All Our Yesterdays – Elizabeth FluxHazard Lights – Zoë BradleyWatching – Zowie…
Read more
There are lively discussions going on about the gendered impacts of coronavirus and how so much policy tends to be male-centric. It might not be intentional, but the problem with unconscious bias is it doesn’t see what it doesn’t want to know. The current crisis has brought to the forefront the size and importance of…
Read more
Over the next few weeks, we’ll introduce you to the incredible people who make up the judging panel of the 2020 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. Today, meet author Jennifer Down. * The Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction calls for stories by women and non-binary writers. What’s your view on diverse representation in publishing? That…
Read more
This is the story of a crime. This is the story of a miracle. There are two stories here. Catherine Noske’s debut novel The Salt Madonna is set on the fictional island of Chesil, where a single terrible event begets religious hysteria that threatens to destroy a close-knit community. The book, which was a decade in…
Read more
Over the next few weeks, we’ll introduce you to the incredible people who make up the judging panel of the 2020 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. Today, meet author Eleni Hale. * The Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction calls for stories by women and non-binary writers. What’s your view on diverse representation in publishing? Without…
Read more
Over the next few weeks, we’ll introduce you to the incredible people who make up the judging panel of the 2020 Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. Today, meet poet, writer and zinester, Rae White. * The Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction calls for stories by women and non-binary writers. What’s your view on diverse representation…
Read more
Have you ever felt that thundering ache in your chest, like your heart was going to explode? Rupture? Like it was you under the floorboards in an Edgar Allen Poe poem? The imminent booming becoming louder and louder and louder until it eventually drives you insane? And everyone just looks the other way? We all…
Read more
Have you ever played around with power roles in the bedroom? Maybe you’ve tried some teacher/student role play? Maybe you’ve dabbled in restraints or spanking? Maybe you’ve had a partner ask you to choke them during sex? It can be a turn-on to be given total power over your partner’s body, or to give up…
Read more
The Lip team is saddened to learn of the recent death of Australian YA author, Steph Bowe, from complications related to T-cell acute lymphoblastic lymphoma, which she was diagnosed with in April 2019. She was 25. Steph published her first novel, Boy Meets Girl, at just sixteen years old and went on to publish two…
Read more
The room spun around me, blurring the faces that stared out at me from all directions. I reached for the wall to steady myself and realised too late I’d missed the mark. My body fell to the floor. Ashley laughed at me and continued her drunken dance to Arrested Development’s Mr Wendal. From my…
Read more
Journalist-cum-author Azadeh Moaveni commands a wealth of knowledge when it comes to Middle Eastern politics and ideology, and it shines in her latest offering, Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS. This narrative non-fiction is written as a pastiche of sorts, vividly painting a picture of the journeys many Muslim women followed…
Read more