OVER THE TOP: OutStanding Short Story Competition Winners 2019

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“You girls are so over the top,” Celeste's mother said, rolling her eyes, chiding at us dressed in faux fur and glitter platform boots and blue eyeshadow to go to the shops and buy hot chips. Her mother didn't know what we did in the dark. How we listened to David Bowie singing “All you pretty things” and knew it was about us. Our eyebrows were plucked away to a single line, hair cut like David Bowie. We presented like identical twins in high waisted jeans and giant hoop earrings, but Celeste was confident unlike me, and I rode invisible and spellbound in her slipstream.

Over The Top was the Theme for the 2019 OutStanding Short Story Competition, Australia’s premier queer literary event. Our community has a long appreciation of the extravagant and outrageous, and that was reflected in many entries. But we’re a diverse lot — perhaps now more than ever — so it’s not surprising that OTT was also interpreted in many other wonderfully imaginative ways. The eight winning entries reflect that variety, from rising sea levels to basketball to a superdrag flying “over the top” of Oxford Street! This commemorative collection celebrates another successful OutStanding Competition, with an amazing array of creative writing talent for everyone to celebrate and savour.