Zoe Terakes Intertwines Queerness, Nature, and Mythology In Debut Novel

Zoe Terakes’ debut novel, Eros: Queer Myths for Lovers is more than just a reimagining of Greek mythology, heavy with eroticism, embodiment and an explicit focus on untold queer stories.

Eros is Terakes’ writing debut, having worked previously on stage and screen, from Melbourne Theatre Company’s A View from the Bridge to Disney’s Ironheart, where they made history as the first trans actor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The collection is introduced with an oft-used Sappho quote from Anne Carson’s translation of the legendary lesbian poet’s work: “someone will remember us, I say, even in another time”.  It sets the tone for what is, ultimately, a testament to the endurance of queer love, scattered throughout human history, back to some of the West’s earliest documented stories.

Terakes spent three months intensively researching Greek mythology, ending up with a shortlist of 20 stories they whittled down to five. They say they decided to focus on love stories: Icarus and Apollo, a new reading of Eurydice and Orpheus, and Terakes’ own interpretation of Hermaphorditus, the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, who was raped by a naiad and transformed into a being of two sexes.

“I was like, ‘fuck, can I try and make that the violent incident a loving one?'” Terakes told the Star Observer. “And then was like, oh, I don’t really have a story where the person finds love within themselves. That just became so clear that, of course, this person went from having something thrust upon them that they didn’t choose, to being deified for that thing and worshiped.”

Blending myth and modernity, Terakes’ stories span from ancient Crete to Sydney’s Marrickville, with a heavy focus on the natural world, a place that they’ve found sanctuary in as a transmasculine non-binary person.

“Nature doesn’t just like tolerate transness, it depends on it,” Terakes said. “It’s no accident that we’re here, and I feel like nature is so welcoming of that. It doesn’t ask anything of you.”

Inherently, there is an eroticism in nature- the soft caress of a breeze, the heat of the sun. Terakes’ prose is heart-wrenchingly intimate with the physicality of the natural world. There is no shame in its exploration of sexuality, just an understanding that expressions of desire and the coming together of flesh- in whatever capacity they show themselves- are as fundamental as the breath moving in and out of our lungs.

“There’s something about ethnic folks specifically,” they say. “I think wogs, you know, we are so embodied.

“I guess there is something with being non-Anglo that makes you unafraid of the body, and really attracted to the body, and how bodies, I guess, communicate with each other.”

“The way these characters engage with each other sexually or fuck each other, there’s so much their relationship with themselves, with the world, with each other.”

Terakes refuses to allow their work to be constrained to the imaginations of cisheteronormativity. They’re not writing to educate or inspire cis people. None of this is about them, and they’re refreshingly blunt about their unwillingness to accomodate and audience they have no desire to.

“As trans people, we have to do so much educating all the time and explaining, and I’m not going to waste time doing that in my art.

“I don’t hope it’ll be accepted. I don’t care, actually.”

It’s in this writing for a queer audience that Terakes was able to find a bit of relief between the pages.

“I guess now that I’m on the other side of it… I hope that other people find the solace in it that I did, and I hope that people feel that combination of relief and reprieve from the outside world, in getting to live in these stories, but also that reflection of the outside world.

“I just hope trans people get to kind of live in these stories and feel like they can breathe in them or something.”

Eros: Queer Myths for Lovers is available now.