The project entitled, ‘With Love from Queer-Kuir-Κουήρ Cyprus: A Mega-Zine of Literary and Artistic Responses to Postcolonialism & Partition’, consists of a co-edited e-zine, an artist zine, and a co-created Zoomcast.
Write/Right to the World Group, a new group consisting of undergraduate and postgraduates along with members of Divisional staff. The group responds to the struggles happening in our contemporary ‘moment’, where they use literature and arts to support the right of all people to write, read and construct the world, thereby capturing a distinct solidarity for an inclusive differential world.
With Love From Queer-Kuir-Κουήρ Cyprus is the group’s first project that focuses on the ‘LGBTQIA-to-Z’ lived experiences related to recent postcolonial and partitioned failures, responds to failures linked to anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric in Turkey, and anti-corruption peaceful protests in Cyprus, among various other socio-political failures across the world.
The project was sponsored by the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and the Centre for Creative Writing. The project has been co-created and edited together with Dr Bahriye Kemal and the undergraduate and postgraduate student body – Rebecca Copsey, Guy Forster-Pearce, IG, Kaan Serin, Elizabeth Watson Winsome and Monica Monit – who are studying the modules, ‘Right/Write to the World: Displacement, Social Movement and Political Action’, as well as ‘Contemporary, Reaching Out to the Community’ and ‘Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse’.
The MegaZine consists of 40 leading and emerging queer voices as captured through words, images and sounds in 120 groundbreaking pages.
Here is the link to the free downloadable E-MegaZine, shaped through working with Drew Kemp, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Social Justice, Augustas University, and Zine Scholar.
The project also consists of a limited edition artists’ MegaZine completed this month through guidance from artist Egidija Ciricaite and Dr Stella Bollaki. This is a handmade and handwritten multi-sensory haptic Cypriotised art object that brings to life the postcolonial queer times, energies and places that feature in the words, images, and sounds within the E-MegaZine. The artist’s zine comes in a rose-scented, jasmine-scented or non-scented options.The project has raised £200 for the charities Accept Cyprus and Queer Cyprus Association.