Catflap #5

190 x 250 mm, 88 pages

Belfast, Ireland

First published 2021

Annual 

Editor: So Mayer

Publisher: Outburst Arts/Ruth McCarthy & Caleb Roberts

Design: Other Office

‘Smart Queer Writing with a Disco Heart’

A gorgeous little number from Belfast with a particularly wonderful tagline. (Who wouldn’t want a Disco Heart?) This is the fifth instalment of Outburst Art’s soft, literary annual, exploring everything from Sex and Memory, to Journalism and Literature—and all through a queer lens, at that.

So Mayer opens their first editor’s letter with the multitude of things a magazine can embody: ‘a gallery, a dancefloor, a protest, a meeting-place’. Belfast DJs Marion Hawkes and Katiee.Eem converse about the safe and liberating haven provided by queer nightlife in the face of domestic hardship. Chi Ta-Wei writes about the 1990s golden era of queer literature in Taiwan and her connection with the lives and writing of literary peers Qiu Miaojin—who she never met—and Ari Heinrich—now, a close friend; she ties this reflection together with the Chinese phrase ‘chājiān érguò’, a common Taiwanese expression meaning: ‘brushed shoulders and kept walking’. Elsewhere, Benjamin Lindsay shares a personal piece connecting the queer and gender-fluidity of Oystercatchers with himself, pushing through adversity, finding a new meaning of home, and an internal serenity.