In This Together Q&A | Dylin Hardcastle

Festival month has arrived! But before the Festival officially kicks off, we want to introduce you to some of the participants who have travelled from near and far to discuss their books, writing and ideas with us. Throughout this Q&A series, get to know favourite and unfamiliar writers and consider the 2025 theme, In This Together.

Dylin Hardcastle is a Sydney-based author whose most recent work, A Language of Limbs, uncovers Sydney’s LGBTQIA+ history with a tender dual-narrative.

What do you hope readers take away from your work?

In the context of a world that is right now insisting on the expulsion of trans and gender diverse people not only from public life, but also from the public imagination, I hope that my work emphasises instead the way trans and gender diverse people insist on living and that my novels help to carve out space for futures in which all of us live.

A Language of Limbs paints a searing picture of Sydney’s LGBTQIA+ scene across the decades, how did you conduct your research?

I began in the State Library of NSW and the Art Gallery of NSW – talking to curators and archivists. I then found Pride History Group and listened to several of their recorded interviews and also read their publications, New Day Dawning and Out and About. The best research, however, came through my relationships with friends who strutted those streets in protest in the 1970s and 1980s and who have shown me, today, that dancefloors and dinner tables remain sacred sites for the making of queer family.

What’s on your TBR pile now?

Mettle by Anne-Marie Te Whiu, The Nightmare Sequence by Omar Sakr and Safdar Ahmed and all of the books shortlisted for the Stella Prize!

Your split protagonists represent wholly different experiences and worldviews, how did this influence the writing process? Did they grow and choose their lives simultaneously in your mind?

I was writing their lives simultaneously until roughly one third of the way through the novel when the protagonist inside Limb One’s chapters became fully alive after moving into Uranian House. I felt so drawn to this story that I wrote the entirety of her side of the novel. Then, I went back and filled in all of the gaps where the Limb Two chapters now sit. I had to think long and hard about what was happening in the world of Limb Two, but for anyone familiar with the story, as soon as I worked out the Morgan / Wales storyline, Limb Two’s world became as real in my mind and heart as Limb One’s was.

What is the first book you remember reading?

Blueback by Tim Winton.

What book do you wish you could read for the first time again?

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong.

What events at this year’s Festival are you looking forward to attending?

Queerstories – Maeve is the most incredible curator and always thinks deeply about the run-order of the performances to take you on a riveting and emotional journey from start to finish. I’m so excited to see Torrey Peters speak and also super excited for the official launch of Australia’s first anthology of Muslim poetry at Ritual and Jazz Money in Songstress Poetica.