In Conversation: Crossing Boundaries and Borders in Queer Literature

Writers Max Lobe and Okechukwu Nzelu will be in a timely conversation to discuss queer literature’s contribution to exploring and exploding all kinds of boundaries and borders.

Lobe’s recently translated novel Does Snow Turn a Person White Inside?, set against a backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment and political polarisation in Switzerland, explores a queer migrant experience as its gay African protagonist casts a critical eye on both their culture and the perceived image of Europe as a place of safety and tolerance.

Nzelu’s exquisite and heartbreaking novel Here Again Now offers a fresh perspective on queer kinship, masculinity, safe spaces, home and (un)belonging. Nzelu explores the intersections of sexuality, gender, race, desire, grief and trauma, as the novel’s queer Black British characters navigate the psychological costs of failing to fit into norms and expectations.

Join us to hear these electrifying young writers unpack the ways in which prevailing social, historical and emotional conditions affect queer people of colour.

Born in 1986 in Douala, Max Lobe is a Swiss-Cameroonian novelist, short story writer, and poet. Among the topics which transcend his work, Black African homosexuality, migration and post-colonial studies are recurrent. He is openly gay. At eighteen, he moved to Switzerland where he earned a BA in communication and journalism (Lugano) and a master’s in public policy and administration (Lausanne).

In 2017, his novel Confidences on the war of independence of Cameroon won the Ahmadou Kourouma Prize. Other books by the author include 39 rue de Berne, La Trinité bantoue, and La Promesse de Sa Phall’Excellence (Jan 2021), a burlesque, fantastic and erotic novel on tyranny.

Okechukwu Nzelu is a Manchester-based writer. In 2015 he was the recipient of a Northern Writers’ Award from New Writing North.

His debut novel, The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney (Dialogue Books, 2019), won a Betty Trask Award; it was also shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Polari First Book Prize, and longlisted for the Portico Prize. In 2021, it was selected for the Kingston University Big Read. His second novel, Here Again Now (Dialogue Books, 2022) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award and longlisted for the Polari Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Diverse Book Awards.

He has made several appearances on national radio, and is a regular contributor to Kinfolk magazine. He is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University.

Sponsored by The Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE), University of Brighton.

This event is co-curated by Vedrana Velickovic (University of Brighton) and Lesley Wood (New Writing South). It is part of the ‘Fictions of the Political’ research strand (CAPPE, UoB) led by Dr Velickovic and is linked to the wider CAPONEU project https://www.caponeu.eu/ (EU Horizon funded) which this year focuses on the fictions of political borders.