Sam Mills talks to Matt Cook

Author Sam Mills says the stories of nine pioneering bisexual artists, writers and musicians change our understanding of the world’s largest sexual minority.

Mills says bisexuality is often seen as a waystation on the route to a different sexuality altogether rather than an entity in itself. She counters this by interweaving her experience of being bisexual with the stories of writers and artists including Colette, Bessie Smith, Marlene Dietrich, Anaïs Nin, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Madonna. She says each of these trailblazing figures have been misunderstood, explains how social attitudes affected their sexuality and their work and how portrayals of LGBTQ+ identities and attitudes towards bisexuality have progressed.

Mills is author of The Quiddity of Will Self, The Watermark, three young adult novels, and a memoir about being a carer, The Fragments of My Father. Here she talks to Chair of the History of Sexuality at the University of Oxford Matt Cook, a social and cultural historian specialising in LGBT and queer history.