Editorials from Peril prose editor Lian Low and poetry editor Miriam Lo.

Owen Leong’s solo exhibition Birthmark recently opened at Anna Pappas Gallery in Prahran, Melbourne. In Birthmark, twelve half-human, half-creature photographic portraits are displayed along the walls of the gallery. Their gazes resist an easy reading, their commonality their shared Asian-Australian identities and the Australian native moths that mark their faces. Whether the moths are masks or part of the skin is a concept that Leong plays with. Situated on a separate wall is a portrait of Tom Cho; unlike his moth-marked companions, he has a nasty cut across his cheekbone with pink liquid oozing upwards into his sideburn. Cho’s image is the cover of his book, Look Who’s Morphing.

Comments from Lian Low, prose editor of Peril.

At the 2008 Melbourne and 2009 Adelaide Fringe Festivals, LOCA’s Ladies of Colour Cabaret show sold out every night they performed. Merge an Adelaide street magazine rated LOCA second in their “top ten most controversial, unexpected and weird moments” at the Adelaide Fringe. They came second only to Cunts – an exhibition of 140 porcelain sculptures of women’s vulvas. The Ladies hold this notorious nomination with great pride.

The three LOCA ladies – Lia, Rai and Loretta – met at Monash University as activists in the feminist, queer and …

One of my role models… encounters with Lisa Bellear