Conceptualizing Peripheral Sexualities in Historical Fiction from Northern Ireland

Abstract: This essay explores a newly emergent narrative positioning for minor or secondary queer characters whose queerness exists at the edges of a text, while avoiding narrow framings of queer exceptionalism and tired and essentialist tropes of sexual difference. This essay shows how this queer figure departs from earlier modes of queer representation. Tracing these peripheral queer figures in recent historical fiction that explores the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the essay focuses on three recent texts that center on this period: Anna Burns’s award-winning novel Milkman (2018), Lisa McGee’s teen drama Derry Girls (2018–2022), and Louise Kennedy’s novel Trespasses (2022).