Ahead of his latest novel Orange, published by VERVE Books on 19 February 2026, author Curtis Garner reflects on the difference between “rural masculinity, which is imposed through threat, [and] urban gay masculinity, which is enforced through desire”
My second novel, Orange, explores queerness as something shaped not only by desire but by geography, surveillance and the rules – spoken and unspoken – around masculinity. A few months ago a group of straight men wound down their windows to scream faggot at me in the middle of a crowded street in King’s Cross in London. The incident gave me pause – for the first time in my 29 years I wondered to what extent I (aesthetically – I had a skirt on), had brought on homophobia myself. Of course, the thought passed almost as soon as it arrived, and off they sped through the traffic lights.
Growing up queer in Cornwall was defined largely by overt policing when I was a teenager. Masculinity was publicly enforced through school, memory, family. It was lost on me that manliness, like sexuality, could be a spectrum…
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(Source: Curtis Garner / Attitude)
Editor’s Note: If you haven’t, you must read Garner’s classic novel, Isaac.
