AustLit

'In crumpled boxes on back shelves in op shops there are wooden queens (hand-painted), and marble queens with blue felt glued to their bases. Also glass queens who would clink as they touched pieces they were taking, and magnetic queens who would snap to their squares and never scatter. In chess, queen is a verb. To queen a pawn is to promote it into a more powerful piece. Chess operates like gender: it is an open system of signs where prescribed categories and conventions collapse and split into infinite permutations. To play is to create configurations. Chess and gender are languages. To queen is to disrupt both.'  (Publication abstract)