Bobuq Sayed

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Bobuq Sayed
Alma materUniversity of Miami
San Jose State University
Occupation(s)Writer, poet, theatre-maker

Bobuq Sayed is an Afghan-Australian writer, poet and theatre-maker,[1][2][3] who is the author of A Brief History of Australian Terror. It was recommended by ABC News as a "best new book" in 2024. Their novel No God But Us is due to be published in 2026.

Biography

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Born in Australia to Afghan parents,[4] they are member of the Afghan diaspora and are non-binary.[3] They have a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Miami.[4] In 2018 Sayed was a member of the theatre collective Embittered Swish, the group worked to create performances that expanded what was considered trans dramaturgy.[3] This involved moving away, for example, from work related to transition or dysphoria.[3] Sayed's work also featured in the 2018 exhibition The Third Muslim: Queer and Trans* Muslim Narratives of Resistance and Resilience held at SOMArts in San Francisco.[5]

Sayed's writing is noted for its challenges to structural racism within Australian literary communities.[6] They are also a former editor of Archer magazine.[4] Sayed co-edited Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia alongside Sam Elkin, Alex Gallagher and Yves Rees.[7][8] They were a 2022–23 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University.[9] In 2024 they published A Brief History of Australian Terror,[10] which was recommended by ABC News as a "best new book" in 2024.[10] Academic David Coady reviewed the work as an "excellent contribution to an important topic", whilst suggesting that the work leaves many things unsaid especially the conflation of Zionism with ant-Semitism in Western thought.[11] A Kundiman Fellow,[12] their first novel No God But Us is due to be published in 2026.[13]

In 2021 they co-organised a fundraiser to supply mutual aid to LGBTQ+ Afghans in Afghanistan.[14]

References

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  1. ^ Berry, Jess; Kalms, Nicole; Moore, Timothy; Bawden, Gene (2025-03-18). Designing Gender Sensitive Spaces for Consenting Cities: Practices and Provocations. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-32891-0.
  2. ^ Pallotta-Chiarolli, Maria (2018-09-24). Living and Loving in Diversity: An anthology of Australian multicultural queer adventures. Wakefield Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-1-74305-595-3.
  3. ^ a b c d "Troubling the linear: Meet the trans and non-binary artists reimagining the way we tell stories". ABC News. 2018-06-21. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
  4. ^ a b c Belkacemi, Rim El. "Pushing the boundaries". news.miami.edu. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
  5. ^ Kayvon, Shervin. "Queer Muslim Artists Are Beyond A "Movement"". INTO. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
  6. ^ Quist, Jennifer (2025-05-15). Translingual Creative Writing Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy: Daoism and Decentering Monolingual Workshops. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-350-51062-3.
  7. ^ Elkin, Sam; Gallagher, Alex; Rees, Yves; Sayed, Bobuq (2022-08-30). Nothing to Hide: Voices of Trans and Gender Diverse Australia. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-1-76118-512-0.
  8. ^ ""I saw gender as pretty arbitrary"". ABC listen. 2022-10-02. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
  9. ^ "Stories by bobuq-sayed on Guernica". Guernica. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
  10. ^ a b "Sex, chess and time travel: Welcome to the best books of 2024". ABC News. 2024-12-13. Retrieved 2025-11-09.
  11. ^ Coady, David (9 December 2024). "Review of A Brief History of Australian Terror, by Bobuq Sayed". Mascara Literary Review (30) – via preprint copy.
  12. ^ "Fellows". Kundiman. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
  13. ^ Sayed, Bobuq (2026-05-26). No God But Us. HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-06-341946-9.
  14. ^ "Organizers Of A GoFundMe To Help Queer And Trans Afghans Say The Platform Won't Allow Them To Access The Money". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on 2024-02-29. Retrieved 2025-11-16.
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