Queer-Kuir-Κουήρ Cyprus: A Mega-Zine of Literary and Artistic Responses to Postcolonialism & Partition

For LGBTQ+ History Month 2021, we created this MegaZine of literary and artistic responses and reaction to postcolonialism, partition and contemporary struggles. Our MegaZine has been produced with love from Cyprus and in solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community, who struggle for their right to Cyprus, right to the Mediterranean, and right to the World. This MegaZine brings together 40 voices who speak of queerness through poetry, short stories, essays, film, artwork, and their experimentations in English, Greek and Turkish. Through these voices you will see and hear about the ‘LGBTQIA-to-Z’ lived experiences related to colonial, postcolonial and partitioned moments, recent struggles linked to anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in Turkey, anti-corruption peaceful protests in Cyprus, among various other contemporary socio-political failures across the world. These poets, writers and artists together actively read, paint, write, perform and live through ‘LGBTQIA-to-Z’ rhythms –space/place, time and energy; these voices together challenge and respond to the hostile environments that create sites without rights for the LGBTQ+ community in the island and those beyond. In this process our MegaZine captures a distinct queer rhythm and solidarity that celebrates ‘right to difference’ and ‘truth of space/space’ for the actual production of a distinct queer Cyprus, Mediteranean and world.

The project has been co-created by Write/Right to the World, a group that responds and reacts to the struggles happening now in our postcolonial contemporary ‘moment’, where we use literature and arts to actively support the right of all people to write, read, express and construct the world, thereby capturing a distinct solidarity and truths for an inclusive differential world

The group consists of Bahriye Kemal and the undergraduate and postgraduate student body -- Rebecca Copsey, Guy Forster-Pearce, IG, Winsome Monica Minott, Kaan Serin, Elizabeth Watson -- who are studying modules based on topics related to queer identities, colonial and postcolonial moments, contemporary literature, rights, activism and outreach. The project has been sponsored by the Centres for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and Creative Writing , School of English, University of Kent.