Firstly, big ups to the redesigners of the minimalist site...looks like our humble ghee-d up roti's turned into a sleek little naan! And welcome DesiItaliana, wish my country was sexy too but we're a bit too gumpy to make desi-ness more lovely than it already is...

Or are we? Have just stumbled on a fabulicious local writer who reminds me of past-life-shame that I am about to delve into for a lame-ass talk I have to give to a bunch of poker-up-their-arse private school girls. See a million years ago, I did something that is sooo high school (two years ago actually...) I wrote a lesbian love story that won a national short story award. And then I (in my first ever taste of media spotlight) denied my inner lesbian by repeatedly assuring the interviewer I was not a lesbian which meant that I had a feature article/TV interview etc. about how I above all things was not, definitely not, gay.

So in many ways I have tried to atone for my previous non-pride. I have bought leather boots and worn them to dangerous places. I have worn sparkly eyeshadow at completely inappropriate times. I have publicly admitted to 'Bootylicious' being my fantasy theme song. But now, it seems, I have found something to complete my penance. She's desi, she's queer, she's a great writer and she's Kiwi! Ka-ching, my no-pride debt repaid. Ladies, gentleman and people of indeterminate gender, I present...Annamarie Jagose.

Before you ask that kind of beauty does only come from a bit of cookies and cream (damn those hotter bicultural beings!)Jagose is German-Indian, while the down-to-earth-ness of her writing and personality mos' def' comes from the quaint little town of Ashburton that she grew up in. Not only is she a Media lecturer at my university, she is also the award winning writer of Slow Water, a novel set on stormy seas on a colonial voyage during which an English clergyman called William Yates embarks on a love affair with a cabin boy. Mmmm I think my girl-crush has stepped up a notch...Slow Water won the national 2004 Montana Book Awards Deutz Medal and the Victorian Premier Award in Australia (ie big deal over here)...

Her other fiction works include the excellent In Translation which takes a desi angle on queer identity, which is the main theme of her prose and academic writing. She has also written Lulu, Lesbian Utopics and numerous short stories.

Would just like to leave an open space here for suggestions of any awesome queer/LGBT writers that people have read. Not sure if we have a lit category but consider this the first of many atoning-for-stunted-literature-knowledge-due-to-Catholic-girls'-school education forays into the 'exotic', (that's for you Vivek and it comes with complementary mangoes and dancing elephants), kaleidoscopic, wonderful world of DESI LIT!

Happy Pride month!