Excerpt from review of Australian Gay and Lesbian Writing: An Anthology, Robert Dessaix (ed.), Sydney Star Observer, Friday 1 October 1993, p. 19

Dessaix claims gay writers dealing with AIDS can only come up with story-lines of despair and “at times quite clichéd sentimentality”. Leaving aside my own recent fiction, I don’t see how this applies to Eric Michaels’ autobiographical Unbecoming, William Yang’s slide night monologue Sadness or any of Peter Blazey’s ‘Out & Out’ columns on the subject in Outrage; all writing of the highest standard that should have been included. Stephen J. Williams, Kerry Bashford, Alex Harding, Denis Gallagher, Tony Ayers and, indeed, a number of Dessaix’s contributors have all written about AIDS. Dessaix has chosen to virtually ignore the topic.

Gary Dunne