OffKilter: Journal of Queer Arts and Politics is a peer-reviewed journal founded with support from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
We believe that queer art is always political. Art has the power to generate solidarity, change perspectives, undermine authority. For decades, art has been essential to queer political movements. OffKilter explores the queer art as a force for intervention in the past, and how it might be used today to work towards queer liberation.
Aims
OffKilter publishes work by emerging queer creatives which explores the political dimensions of queer art. We seek to honour the ingenuity of generations past while collecting together the insurgent voices of years to come.
Throughout our textured history, queer people have shown an unabating appetite for creative production, an appetite which goes hand-in-hand with political resistance. OffKilter at once celebrates art made in spite of – and often because of – adversity and puts forth a call to draw on this energy for political change.
The central objectives of the journal are:
To promote emerging queer creatives by publishing their work in an accessible format;
To stimulate the production of critical and creative work that engages with political issues affecting queer people;
To forge connections between queer creatives, inviting cross-fertilisation between academic and practical spheres.
At OffKilter, we refuse to lock the ‘queer’ into any stable definition: the term refers to a set of nonconformist identities, modes of practice, and radical politics. We will not ask anyone to prove their queerness when submitting, but the submission must be relevant to those of sexual and gender minority cultures. OffKilter particularly encourages submissions from lesser-represented queer groups like those who are nonbinary, aro/ace, or intersex, and those of Global Majority ethnicity.
Scope
OffKilter invites any manifestation of politically engaged queer creativity. We therefore take a broad approach to notions of queerness, politics, and art. Submissions can be in any format, as long as they are publishable on the journal’s website.
This includes, but is not limited to:
Writing
essays • creative writing • reviews • translation
Visual
photography • visual art • curation • sequential art
Audio
music • sound art • podcasts • audio essay
Audiovisual
video essay • video art • short film
Performance
theatre • dance • live art • drag • burlesque
For more information on submissions, please refer to Submissions.
Editorial team
Editor
Noah Jay
he/him
Noah’s work lies at the intersection of sound, image, and the word. He has scored a number of short and experimental films, produced video essays on a number of subjects, and had his writing published in academic journals. Previously, he has composed and directed music in theatre productions and produced musical events. His essay on sound and music in Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire was published in Sonic Scope journal in 2025 (for whom he also peer reviews) and his review of Emilija Talijan’s Resonant Bodies in Contemporary European Art Cinema (2023) was featured in Music, Sound, and the Moving Image journal. He has recently received a distinction in his Masters of Music and Audiovisual Culture at Goldsmiths, wherein he focused on both his primary interest in queer theory and the sounding image and related interest like the effect of COVID on audiovisual culture. OffKilter marks Noah’s largest project to date, fusing his passion across the arts with his penchant for project management and operations.
Co-Editor
Elisabeth Gunawan
she/they
Elisabeth Gunawan 吳金蘭 is a critically acclaimed, award-winning writer and performer. As founder of KISS WITNESS, her work decolonises the imagination and creates spaces of belonging. She is an Associate Artist with Theatre Ad Infinitum and ArtsAdmin (Lab Residency), and part of Hampstead Theatre’s INSPIRE 2024–2025 cohort. Her work has been supported by Battersea Arts Centre, New Diorama, Barbican, Royal Court, and The Pleasance. Her headphone theatre piece ‘STAMPIN’ IN THE GRAVEYARD’ sold out at VOILA! Festival 2024, winning the Thess Fringe Exchange Award, and will head to Summerhall, Edinburgh Fringe 2025. Her upcoming show ‘PRAYERS FOR A HUNGRY GHOST’ premieres at The Barbican this autumn. Elisabeth wrote and performed ‘Unforgettable Girl’, which premiered at Edinburgh Fringe 2023 and won the Charlie Hartill Award, OFFFest Award, Best Performer at The Stage Debut Awards 2022, and Best Writing from Theatre Weekly. She is also developing ‘THREE SISTERS: SUBTLE, VAGUE & AMBIGUOUS’ and ‘GHOST TOWN PROJECT’ with Theatre Ad Infinitum. As a cabaret artist, she performs as Glo Tesque with The Bitten Peach, and is a finalist in Burlesque Idol 2024. She is completing a PhD at Goldsmiths, researching the bouffonesque and grotesque through decolonisation and intersectional feminism.
Marketing and Design Manager
Khyati mehta
she/her
I’m Khyati Mehta, a graphic designer, illustrator, and content creator currently based between London and Dubai. My practice spans brand storytelling, graphic design, editorial design, and social media content creation. I’m passionate about using design not just to communicate but to connect, whether through a compelling layout, a playful graphic, or a digital moment that sparks dialogue.
With over three years of experience studying and practicing design, I often draw from themes of language, community, and diasporic identity. I care about crafting visuals that feel intentional and full of character.
Editorial board
Roseanna Dunn
she/her
Roseanna is a composer and arts practitioner whose work is guided by the principles of new feminist and queer theory. She believes that the prioritisation of heterarchy, multiplicity, and equity in music creation itself can guide industry change: consequently, her projects often comprise collective, community-based, and iterative forms. Roseanna seeks to facilitate community through creative praxis, trouble the composer/performer/audience tripartite, and engage humanistic compositional methodologies that counter hyper-individualism.
Roseanna is in demand as a composer, across the UK and beyond: her current and most recent commissioners and collaborators include the North Wales International Music Festival, the John Armitage Memorial Foundation, Artspring Berlin, Club Together Club, and Help Musicians. Roseanna is also active as a conductor, harpist and vocalist, having performed in/for the BBC Proms, the One Show, BBC Radio Three, St Mark’s Basilica, St Martin in the Fields, and the Canadian Parliament Buildings.
Roseanna completed her MPhil in Composition at Sidney Sussex College Cambridge in 2024, supported by a Vaughan Williams Postgraduate bursary, and graduated with a distinction and the Arthur Bliss Composition Prize. During this time, she was also the Assistant Director of the Inter Alios Choir of Churchill College Cambridge, from where she previously graduated from a BA in music with first class honours and a prize scholarship in 2022.
Zhui Ning Chang
they/them
Zhui Ning Chang is a Malaysian editor, writer, and theatre maker based in London, UK. Across disciplines, their work often explores decoloniality, migration and diaspora, maritime exchanges, and speculative futures.
In publishing, Zhui Ning is editor-in-chief at khōréō, an award-winning magazine of speculative fiction and migration. They are also an Advisor on Bloomsbury’s Lit in Colour initiative (2024/25). Their translations and essays have been published by PEN Malaysia, Strange Horizons, Science Fiction Studies, and more.
In theatre, Zhui Ning is co-creator and librettist on original queer musicals Asian Pirate Musical and Seashore Yuanfen. They direct new playwriting and new music theatre, and regularly read for theatres and playwriting competitions including the Royal Court, Theatre503, and Woven Voices. Additionally, Zhui Ning was Connections Producer at Global Voices Theatre (2018-2024), where they produced international play reading events in collaboration with UK venues, as well as two workshop series, a podcast, and three play anthologies. Zhui Ning has been a recipient of the MGCfutures Bursary Award, British Council IETM Award, and VAULT Origins Award for Outstanding New Work.Currently, Zhui Ning is pursuing a PhD in decolonial Southeast Asian speculative fiction at Birkbeck, University of London, supported by AHRC CHASE. https://www.zhuiningchang.com/.
MichaŁ biLski
he/him
Michał Bilski is a lecturer in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, where he also completed a Research Master’s degree. He teaches film and cross-media classes as well as theoretical and philosophical courses. His research interests include film theory, hydrofeminism, camp aesthetics, and audio-visual modes of inquiry. Michał has presented his ongoing work on hydrofeminism at the Sea Mediations Conference: Hydro-criticism and Tidal Thinking(University of Amsterdam) and The Flowing Image Conference: The Ocean On-Screen (University of Southampton).
Harriet Rose
she/her
Harriet Rose is a writer, publisher, and printer from Brighton, UK. She edits and prints the New Cambridge Chapbook Review (TNCCR), and runs the letterpress imprint Baldanders Press. She has recently completed an MPhil in English Studies at the University of Cambridge, and graduated from a BA in English at the University of Sussex in 2024. Her research interests include late modernism, small press and little magazine craft and labour, and nationalisms in poetry.
Nooka Shepherd
she/her
Nooka Shepherd (b.1998) is a multi-media artist based in London. Her practice revolves around the exploration of internal landscapes and her works in paint, sculpture and embroidery aim to communicate a deeply personal and intimate relationship to the natural world. For her, the creative process is a means of accessing and communicating with the more-than-human, and she uses her practice to break down temporal barriers. A marked focus on femininity, matrilineal ancestry and fertility are conduits for Nooka to connect with those who precede her. She aims to reach back beyond the human to our animal, plant and microbial ancestors.
Lucas Mahal
he/him
Lucas Mahal is a London-based translator, specialising in all creative and audiovisual modes of translation, including subtitling, dubbing, voice over, and literary translation. Working with Spanish-English as a language pair, Lucas engages with the intersection of queer studies with translation studies, focusing on the ways in which translation can be used as a means to spread awareness on how queerness is experienced within and across different cultures. Lucas has recently completed his MA in Audiovisual Translation and Localisation at the University of Leeds, supported by a full scholarship. Through this, he has undertaken several projects, translating autobiographical memoirs and documentaries which focus on highlighting the voices of trans individuals living in Spain and Latin America. Lucas was awarded the Spanish Translation Prize by the University of Liverpool for his translation and commentary on trans activist/feminist Elizabeth Duval’s memoir, Reina. He is currently seeking the publishing rights to release an English translation of Solo los Valientes, an autobiographical memoir written by trans author, Alejandro Albán.
Nya Furber
she/her
Nya Furber is a writer, researcher, and editor, recently graduated from University of Cambridge’s English MPhil where she was the recipient of a Judith E. Wilson scholarship. Her research interests cluster around contemporary theorisations of the digital, femininity, and the politics of the archive; she has produced research on Sylvia Plath’s digital reception with young women and on her family archive from Belize. Nya’s writing has been published in New Isles Press, The Mays, Running Dog Magazine, The New Cambridge Chapbook Review, and Delorum Ipsum. Her poems were recently performed by the Swedish Theatre group Teater Fatal for the production R U SCARED YET?, shown at Teater Gijotin in Stockholm and Folkteatern Gothenburg.
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Advisory board
Adam Alston
he/him
Dr Adam Alston is Reader in Modern and Contemporary Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London. He runs the Staging Decadence project (www.stagingdecadence.com), and is Co-Deputy Chair of the Decadence Research Centre. He is the author of Staging Decadence: Theatre, Performance, and the Ends of Capitalism (Bloomsbury 2023), co-editor (with Professor Jane Desmarais) of Decadent Plays: 1890-1930 (Bloomsbury 2024), and co-editor (with Dr Alexandra Trott) of a special issue of Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies on ‘Decadence and Performance’ (Winter 2021). He has also published extensively on immersive and participatory theatres.
Holly Rogers
she/her
Holly Rogers is Professor of Music at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is author of Visualising Music (Verlag), Sounding the Gallery (Oxford University Press), Re/Sounding Spaces (MIT Press) and co-author of Studying Twentieth-Century Music in the West (Cambridge University Press). She has edited several books on audiovisual culture, including Music and Sound in Documentary Film (Routledge), The Music and Sound of Experimental Film (Oxford University Press), Transmedia Directors (Bloomsbury), Cybermedia (Bloomsbury), YouTube and Music (Bloomsbury), Remediating Sound (Bloomsbury) and Conspiracy Soundtracks (Routledge). She is founding editor for Bloomsbury’s book series New Approaches to Sound, Music and Media and the Goldsmiths Press journal “Sonic Scope: New Approaches to Audiovisual Culture”.
Cameron Dodds
he/him
Cameron Dodds is an interdisciplinary researcher, artist and creativity analyst, and founder of Creativity Analysis, a post-qualitative framework exploring creativity as a reparative process. His work integrates philosophy and psychoanalysis to support wellbeing and resilience in creative practice. He works with professionals, leaders, organisations, artists, and therapists to help build more resilient and sustainable frameworks for their creative lives and work. Cameron frequently gives talks on creativity, psychoanalysis, art-making, research methodologies, and philosophy. Recent invitations include presentations at the Jung Club in London, KASK in Ghent, Belgium, and Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK) in Zurich. Alongside his research and consultancy, he creates interdisciplinary art spanning music, video, theatre, and fiction that focuses on the intersections of magic, messiness, and technology. He holds a PhD from The Guildhall School of Music and Drama/City University and lectures at the University of West London, where he also supervises doctoral research. His first book, Magic as Method: Praxis, Meaning, and the Re-enchantment of Process, is forthcoming with Intellect Press in 2028.
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Bio