It is frustrating to see opportunities for ‘diverse writers’ linked to their willingness to write narrowly about their diversity. This approach disqualifies the many talented writers who have already processed or written about these experiences, and who have bigger visions or better imaginations than to endlessly revisit the same questions – who want to see themselves in Australia’s future as well as its past.

Aromanticism is a way of describing people who experience little or no romantic attraction. For me, this means I don’t feel or understand such feelings the way others do. Actually, I find traditional ideas of romance – like dates, chivalry, flowers and chocolates, holding hands, getting married; that kind of thing – pretty repulsive.

People adopt different styles of packing when leaving a place. There are the light-packers who just throw in a change of clothes, grab their smartphones and are good to go. These ones are eager to leave, discard accumulated memories, and make new memories in a new place.

I base almost all of my work on being Arab. I cannot shake the compulsion to publicly claim my identity.

I’m proud to be an Aboriginal man. My family upbringing fostered a strong sense of self and pride. It’s the outside noise that’s the problem. On numerous occasions, it has led me to question whether I have a place in this world.

Angela Nagle has written an indispensable book that allows both the extremely online- and meme-illiterate to grasp the IRL implications of the online culture wars. From the rise of Trump as a lulzy agent of base enjoyment and unrestrained conspiracy, to the collapse of meaning, all are products of an online culture that privileges affect and transgression.

One of my earliest memories of New Zealand is of being told to ‘Go back to China!’ in the playground at school (ironically called the Confidence Course). This irked me, because I wasn’t from China.

Most of the debates about Muslim women’s modes of dress have rested on their ability to conform to narrow ideas of what being Australian looks like or means. Such debates merely lead to the dead ends of assimilation and exclusion. In light of that, it is worth reflecting on the history of the burkini and its importance as a cultural signifier.

I share Teresa’s surprise to discover she was no longer recognised as a bona fide Australian citizen due to recent changes in the law. I also shared her concern. Did the same apply to me? Like Teresa, I hold an Australian passport, have worked for the government, have voted, and became the parent of children born in Australia. But there is a difference: a single, double-sided, colour sheet of stiff A4 paper. This is my Australian citizenship certificate.

Originally a women-only tradition, this branch of occultism is now dominated by queer – and particularly trans ­– people. They’re young, they’re politically engaged and they’re embracing spiritual experiences. They are melding together, in the nature of their tradition, their politics and their spirituality.

Activists since the late 90s have shifted their focus. They now call for more acceptable demands; demands that attempt to assimilate queerness, rather than challenge heterosexual norms, for example advocating for queer people to serve in the military and, of course, gay marriage. The push to absorb gay lives into the neoliberal capitalist norms of monogamy, consumption and colonialism, is what we call ‘homonormativity’.

Australian schools are failing all their students – not just those who identify as queer in some way.

As a writing genre loosely linked to the evolution of opinion editorial, confessional writing offers as much convenience for readers, writers and publishers as it does problems. It’s cheap for publishers, who don’t have to cultivate writers but do have to boost their audiences. If they pay anything at all, even above a small token, they can still evade per-word rates or full-time employment costs by offering flat fees.

Given the public/private crossovers all our lives have become online, it’s hard for people to find the boundaries these days between personality and brand; between what’s appropriate and fun and what’s being a needy whiner.

I come from a family of Appalachian moonshiners who lived in obscurity in the Cumberland Gap of Tennessee. There in the poverty above the coal mines they smoked, chewed tobacco and drank in remote little bars, until bleary-eyed and swooning they staggered back into their rust-bucket cars and made their way on unlit, unpaved paths, through the hills back to their homes.

Ben Carson comes from a long tradition of Black conservatism, ‘one that is rooted in a belief in religious morality, personal responsibility, self-help, individualism and free-market enterprise.’ Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, Black leaders such as Booker T Washington espoused an accommodationist strategy for Black advancement. Rather than directly challenging white supremacy through political means, Black conservatives argued the most effective way of improving African-American prospects was through economic mobility.