Memoir

Lesbian for a Year by Brooke Hemphill

Item: Lesbian for a Year
Author: Crusader Hillis

by Crusader Hillis •

November 2014, no. 366

Affirm Press, $29.95 pb, 235 pp

Memoir

Lesbian for a Year by Brooke Hemphill

by Crusader Hillis •

November 2014, no. 366

Brooke Hemphill knows hers was not meant to be an ordinary existence, yet by her early twenties she is engaged and planning the perfect wedding – with the wrong guy. She breaks it off and moves in with a married man. He, too, is wrong for her. She works on an island resort and falls for another, but he takes off for Europe. She travels to the United States and works on a cruise ship. Life is a continual bender of booze and drugs, until she falls pregnant and returns to Melbourne.

Crusader Hillis

Crusader Hillis is a writer, editor, curator, and producer. He co-founded (with Rowland Thomson) the queer bookshop Hares & Hyenas in 1991. They have since presented over 500 literary and performance events for festivals in Melbourne and Sydney. Hares & Hyenas is now also a fully licensed performance venue presenting over 120 events per year.

Crusader’s fiction and non-fiction has been published in magazines and newspapers here and in the UK. He has had a distinguished parallel career in the arts, managing organisations and marketing teams for festivals, consulting for various major organisations, and serving on several boards and committees.