Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I'm your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I've interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a conversation about the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. To join me in the future, then, please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk that's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on itunes, Spotify and the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going. Today it's Episode 85 with the title Mirrors and Doorways, and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Nonir Amicitia. Nonir describes themselves as the bottom half of a trench coat double act, and I can't wait to find out what that means.

When I asked Nonir to describe their superpower, they said juggling. They are able to keep a ridiculous number of balls in the air. I have it on good authority that's more than ten, so definitely a ridiculous amount. Hello, Nonia. Welcome to the show.

Joanne, thank you so much for having me today.

Absolute pleasure. And you've intrigued me and I really can't wait to find out some of the well, what is the tunic of double act? So I can't wait to find out about that. So, mirrors and doorways. What's that about?

Yeah, as part of the trench coat double act, I co write under the author name, O E Tierman, and we write a book series that is a hopeful queer dystopian. And one of our goals with this series is Mirrors, to show people who aren't generally represented in fiction that they can exist in fun, interesting fiction stories that don't centre around a marginalised identity as their main plot point. Because as queer, mentally ill people, we don't see ourselves in fiction a lot, in stories that aren't coming out stories or, oh, my gosh, overcoming depression stories or things of that nature. So we really wanted to provide that mirror for marginalised folks to see themselves in their communities, in new and different lights. And along those lines is the doorways of we wanted to open the door to conversation and open the door to non marginalised people, to see what it's like to live with a marginalised identity, and also to open those doors to conversations of, how can we make the world a better place? And doing all of that through fiction and through discussions like these.

Fabulous. Because as a queer person myself, there's a lot of queer joy and we get associated with queer negativity rather than euphoria and empowerment we feel as well, don't we?