Queer as Folk Tales by James Penha
Deep Desires Press, October 2025

When James Penha moved to Indonesia more than thirty years ago, he fell in love with its archipelago, its people, and its folk tales. But most of the tales, especially when passed on to him orally by natives, were as fragmentary as an Aesop fable. Penha wanted to ask why a wizard would do this or why a goddess would choose that, but the storyteller had no way of knowing. When Penha did dare to be impolite enough to raise such queries, he would usually be told to “believe it or not. It’s up to you.”

Penha took on the challenge and rewrote and published Indonesian legends with the logic and sometimes the sensibilities and sexualities of contemporary fiction without sacrificing the magic and fantasy and exoticism of the originals.

What Penha, as a gay male, missed in the project were LGBTQIA+ characters and plots. And so he set about queerly adapting tales from around the world. They — as well as Penha’s own original speculative stories — comprise Queer As Folk Tales.

The title reveals the collection’s target audience, of course, but the author says he is pretty sure even straight readers will enjoy the narratives and the characters.