Homophobia

• This program is the first of its kind, combining clinical care and research efforts to create a primary care home for LGBTQIA+ older adults.
• This program is the first of its kind, combining clinical care and research efforts toward LGBTQIA+ older adults.
• "Jefferson is proud to be at the forefront of delivering inclusive, compassionate primary and gender-affirming care for LGBTQIA+ older individuals.
• Pride at the Jefferson Center for Healthy Aging combines best practices in LGBTQIA+ inclusive, geriatrics-informed primary care with advanced care needed by many members of these communities, including gender-affirming care, HIV care, and sensitive advance care planning.

• The event, featuring insightful sessions from more than 30 thought leaders, underscored EQS Group’s commitment to fostering global dialogue and shaping the future of compliance, particularly in a constantly evolving landscape.
• Successfully navigating challenges during times of crises was one of the key points of discussion during the event.
• The possibilities and limits of AI in compliance were explored in depth in a dynamic conversation between compliance professionals and lawyers.
• Every year, the ECEC Award recognizes an outstanding compliance project, and this year saw a record number of submissions, from 25 organizations.

The influential Caine Prize for African Writing for 2023 was won by a power couple from Senegal. Their short story A Soul of Small Places (which can be read over here) echoes deeper trends in the country’s literature while picking up on the growth of horror and speculative fiction across the continent. African literature specialist Caroline D. Laurent explains.

What’s the Caine Prize and what does winning it mean?

• The Caine Prize, awarded annually since 2000, acknowledges a short story written in English by an African author.
• It’s named in honour of Sir Michael Harris Caine, co-founder of the Man Booker Prize.

Who are this year’s winners?

• Diallo is a lawyer and feminist activist who, at 15, founded The Association for Keeping Girls in School in Matam, Senegal.
• Her work served as the inspiration for the winning story, hence the main protagonist’s name, Woppa Diallo.
• His debut collection Dark Moons Rising on a Starless Night was nominated for two 2019 Splatterpunk Awards.

What’s the story about?

• Woppa has the task of protecting her younger sister Awa on their way to school.
• Indeed, girls going to school are often the prey of men who sexually assault them and force them into early marriages.

Why’s it so good?

• The power of literature to focus on individuals and their personal experiences lends a human face to an unresolved social issue.
• References to different gods and spirits also highlight the environment in which Woppa and her family live.
• However, this short story can also resonate with the fears experienced by young girls and women globally.

What does this say about Senegalese fiction?

• The choice to write in English works to dismantle the neocolonial use of languages based on one’s origin and the colonial past of one’s country.
• The Kiswahili Prize for African Literature, where authors write in African languages, complements the Caine Prize.
• Senegalese literature plays a vital role in encouraging people to read, reflect upon and engage with significant matters in the country.

• But instead of the longing for the classic values of an older Australia that valorise war heroism and stoic masculinity, My Sister Jill centres the perspectives of those impacted by this narrative.
• Parents Jack (Ian Bliss), a war veteran and prisoner of war from Changi on the Thai-Burma railway, and Martha (Maude Davey) have five children.
• In a blistering post-war social and cultural commentary, My Sister Jill disrupts ideas of colonial glory with a troubling depiction of family violence, PTSD, homophobia and the ruinous intergenerational impacts of patriarchal oppression on everyone.

The volatility of trauma

• As the story progresses, the children grow up under the volatility of their father’s trauma.
• The harrowing details of this particular scene as Jack recalls this moment of survival to Christine are profound and unsettling.
• On stage, Christine is deeply impacted by this story, its retelling taking her into an imagined reality too frightening to contemplate.

Idealism and false promise

• We see her refusing to wait inside the freezing cold FX Holden with the others when Jack leaves his family for hours outside the pub.
• Christine reunites with Jill as a young adult, about to head to university, the first of the family to attend.
• Christine speaks to the audience one of the last lines in the play “She will, won’t she, My Sister Jill?
• Will she?” Wrapped up in this moment is the idealism and false promise of the late 1960s Australia.