Chat #09 - Sacha Coward
"I like the word queer, it brings us back together"
Sacha Coward has worked in museums and heritage for over fifteen years. For the past three years, he has been freelancing as a historian, public speaker, tour guide and researcher. He has run LGBTQ+ focused tours for museums, cemeteries, archives and cities around the world. Sacha is passionate about queer history, mythology, folklore and storytelling in all their many forms. Queer As Folklore is his first book.
28/10/2025, 13:31 - Finbarre:
Hi Sacha Coward, welcome to Tarot DMs! My family have just this minute returned home from a camping trip in the wild woods clutching LARP-style swords and unexpectedly painful bows. How the devil are you today sir?
28/10/2025, 13:32 - Sacha:
I am doing okay, although I think I’m coming down with a slight cold. Very exciting, kind of coming to middle-aged life in that we’ve had all of our radiators replaced. Very thrilling. And I’ve spent most of the day trying to stop the cat running out onto the main road and killing himself. But other than that, very good.
Spent the entire day so far in my pyjamas, so it can’t be too bad!
28/10/2025, 13:34 - Finbarre:
Congratulations on the new radiators! I have three quick bonus questions to ask you before we get stuck into the tarot:
The first one is, can I see a picture of that cat? If you happen to have one on your phone, just the one or two.
Second question, what kind of pyjamas do you favour? Do you tend to go for, I don’t know, paisley, striped? I’m more of an old-fashioned sort of 1920s Victorian pyjama wearer myself. If I could get away with a fez, I ohso would.
And the last one is, speaking of things like smoking jackets, is it true that you’re related to Noel Coward?
28/10/2025, 13:35 - Sacha:
28/10/2025, 13:35 - Finbarre: (It’s completely normal to have five smoking jackets, right? I thought so)
28/10/2025, 13:36 - Sacha:
So that photo was taken about an hour ago. I took him up into our shed, which we call a “summer house” because we try to pretend to be fancy. But it is a shed. And he likes it there because he can sit and watch the birds, so a little calm moment there.
In terms of pyjamas, my preference is for a paisley. I’m looking down at my paisley pyjamas and double paisleying it, as you can see from the photo. I’ve got a paisley jacket on as well because it is a bit chilly.
And yes, I am related to Noel Coward. We kind of have always had an inkling of it because it’s a slightly weird name. There are a few Cowards out there, but my aunt looked into it and we found out…. and this is where I get really bad at family trees. I believe he is my uncle twice removed. If that doesn’t make sense and I’ve got it wrong, then apologies. But it’s basically like it’s not as close as being a direct uncle. There’s a little linky link before you get there, but he is on the same family tree.
If you look at all of the men in the Coward family, Noel Coward included, we all have the same nose. So sadly, my nose will slowly take over my face like a terrible parasite and by the age of 60, I will be 90% nose.
28/10/2025, 13:37 - Finbarre: Look at that fluffy trouble, what’s their name?
28/10/2025, 13:37 - Sacha: Mikey
28/10/2025, 13:37 - Sacha: Short for Michaelangelo!
28/10/2025, 13:38 - Finbarre: RADICAL! 🥷🐢
28/10/2025, 13:38 - Sacha: (Got to live up to the gay stereotype of giving your pets ludicrously pretentious names)
28/10/2025, 13:38 - Sacha: And yes, me and my husband are also a BIG fan of 90’s cartoons
28/10/2025, 13:41 - Finbarre:
I’m in danger of being wildly derailed. I was about to wax lyrical about late 80s cartoons, things like The Raccoons, which had a theme tune, which went harder than any cartoon ever deserves to have. I think it was Lisa Lougheed’s “Run With Us” as part of the credits. I’m going to have to put the link in now that I’ve mentioned it and it was just glorious. Anyway, before I go on about Ulysses 31 and everything else that I like, Count Duckula, we need to come back to Devil Season!
Now we’re coming up to the spookiest time of the year and Devil Season has almost finished. I’m going to show you one of my favourite Devil cards from Eric Maille’s Ink Witch Tarot and it just so happens to be resting on your book, Queer as Folklore. I’m going to ask you something about your creative process.
28/10/2025, 13:42 - Finbarre:
28/10/2025, 13:43 - Finbarre:
28/10/2025, 13:43 - Sacha: (Raccoon based tangent: Cyril Sneer!)
28/10/2025, 13:43 - Sacha: Fab!
28/10/2025, 13:45 - Finbarre:
Everyone this devil season is receiving exactly the same card, although from different decks. Each question is shaped differently, depending on your creative path. The one that I felt was best for you is:
Which folkloric monster feels unfairly demonized, and what freedom do you see in that monster?
28/10/2025, 13:47 - Sacha:
That is an excellent question. So let me think. I think I am going to go for ancient Greek mythology, although it’s probably quite done. Those stories have been reinterpreted a lot recently. I would say one that I’m really drawn to is the Minotaur. So Theseus and the Minotaur. And I think that’s partly because I saw when I was younger in an adaptation of the storyteller by Jim Henson with amazing puppets of this. It’s very, very spooky.
It really established the fact that the Minotaur is a child. It was born and it has a sister and a mother and a father. And so it may be this monstrous being, but it has this familial connection that is kind of tragic. The fact that Ariadne is his sister and she ends up being abandoned on Naxos by mean old Theseus, who is not such a great guy after all.
I have this affinity for the monster because he lives in a maze. And so there’s something about constructing puzzles and existing in the centre of this big maze that I find quite kind of compelling. Watch this space. I am dabbling with the idea of more fiction writing. I would love to write a version of the Minotaur myth from the perspective of the Minotaur himself.
28/10/2025, 13:50 - Finbarre:
I get the feeling that the response to this will be “Finbarre Snarey, of course I have seen that show” but did you get to see Kaos on Netflix?
Now, the reason why I ask is the depiction of the Minotaur in that, I thought, was superb. The person who really made the whole Minotaur storyline work so well for me was the person who played Daedalus. Mat Fraser was spot on… and it did make you realise the abuse of the Minotaur. Also, I’m just realising it has, you know, this muscular body and horns and goes perfectly for Devil Season.
28/10/2025, 13:52 - Finbarre: Such a shame it only lasted eight episodes! https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80997258
28/10/2025, 13:52 - Sacha:
So I’m going to probably have to revoke my folklore card now. I watched the first episode of Kaos and I did enjoy it and I haven’t watched any more of it. And I know that that is a sin. I’ve been told by many friends that I would love it. It’s one of those things that I’m going to have to be shamed into watching it now because, yeah, otherwise I can’t look at my readership in the face anymore.
Yeah, no, the minotaur, I mean, you get into the whole thing where we have a little thing, even if you’re not a “furry” or fully into this kind of thing, half formed creatures and hybrids are just kind of sexy. You know, mermaids and mermen and centaurs, they often become the object of fantasy. And I guess in a way that the minotaur is kind of, you know, obviously there’s someone for everyone. I’m sure there’s many minotaur fans out there.
But kind of when it goes wrong, when you get the wrong bit of the animal and the wrong bit of the human mixed together and you end up with this, you know, this tragic monster who didn’t ask to be born and is now reviled by his own family. So yeah, I’ll need to watch that. That sounds very compelling.
28/10/2025, 13:55 - Finbarre:
Okay, Sacha, your second tarot card is the Wild Card. This is one that I will pluck from the deck. Obviously, it won’t be The Devil or your third card, they’ve already been removed. It will be pretty much random. When you say stop, and I will pull one out and see what we get. Hopefully you’re feeling lucky.
I’ve just been crossed by a ginger cat. Little Beigli has jumped on the desk and scampered across the keyboard, luckily with no damage done.
So when you’re ready, say stop, and we’ll see what we get.
28/10/2025, 13:56 - Sacha: STOP!
28/10/2025, 13:56 - Finbarre:
28/10/2025, 13:56 - Sacha: Oh he’s a delight!
28/10/2025, 13:56 - Finbarre:
I’m so sorry. Okay, I’m going to take a picture of this one. Let’s see what we can do with this.
28/10/2025, 13:56 - Sacha: OH NO! that doesn’t sound good
28/10/2025, 13:56 - Finbarre:
28/10/2025, 13:57 - Sacha: Hahah even I know that’s a bad’un
28/10/2025, 13:58 - Finbarre:
I am so, so sorry. It just made me think. “Come on Tarot DMs, he said. It’ll be a laugh, he said” No, The Tower is a card we need to take seriously. It’s one of the most strikingly disruptive cards in the tarot. Traditionally, you’d have a spire being struck by lightning and people falling… I think an atomic explosion is a little more hardcore.
Although with this card, you’ve got disruptive energy. It’s not without purpose. So what crumbles now was only unstable to begin with, was destined, doomed. Once the dust settles, you get clarity following that. And after this card is my favourite in the entire deck, the star. So it does move along a very optimistic arc eventually.
Okay, so your question.
28/10/2025, 13:59 - Finbarre:
Has anyone ever proven you wrong about what you thought you knew about queerness in history?
28/10/2025, 14:02 - Sacha:
To answer your question - all the time. I’ve tried to come to the point where I know that what I know is always going to change. So the things that I know now or hold very dear or think we’re important or powerful, you know, I had to learn from someone, or had to transform how I thought.
I’d say one of the big examples, and that came weirdly from reading a book called Bad Gays. I think I spent a lot of my time in my kind of 20s when I was looking at queer history, feeling a real weight on my shoulders to always try and like give positive role models and images.
And I think one of the big understandings is that queer people are just like any kind of person. We have our baddies. There are some awful LGBT people now, but also throughout history. We’re no worse than other people, but we’re also no better. So that’s been like a big sense of transformation.
I think another big one that’s taken over a long, long time is if you’d asked me my early 20s, you know, this is before I would have used the word queer quite as comfortably. I would have described myself as gay, not necessarily as queer. And I had less friends in the community. I knew other gay men. Now I have a much more diverse group of friends.
But back then, I think I saw LGBT, all those different identities as very separate, as like islands, that me as a gay man was very, very different to a transgender person, is very, very different to a lesbian person, that we were all in our own little kind of clubhouses. And then since studying that history and talking to people, actually meeting people who are like me, but different, I see such a huge shared similarity.
That’s one of the reasons why I’m so passionate about, you know, fighting alongside and for people who are not identical to me. But I share so much with my trans friends, my non-binary friends, my asexual friends. And I don’t think I would have realized that when I was younger. If you look at how we’ve been treated historically or categorized, the way that societies have pushed us together, those boundaries between those letters are very, very nebulous.
And I think they can actually be a little bit dangerous. And I think that’s led me to come to the sense of liking the word queer. So that’s been a big wake up as well.
28/10/2025, 14:07 - Finbarre:
That was a wonderful response that left me speechless, thinking about the need for community, especially now of all the years, of all the points in history. Okay, we’re coming up to the third card, and this is the last one.
This is one that’s been given to you by the previous guest Laura Anthony Siragher and this one’s another difficult card. This is the Ten of Swords. After this, it will be up to you to decide which card to pass on to the next person. If you have a deck nearby, or if you just have one that’s been playing on your mind today, that’ll be the time to reveal it.
Let me show you the Ten of Swords, and then I’ll give you the next question.
28/10/2025, 14:08 - Finbarre:
28/10/2025, 14:08 - Sacha: Ouch!
28/10/2025, 14:09 - Finbarre:
And bless you, like everyone, you’re probably hoping for maybe The Lovers or The Magician or The Sun. This one is, this one’s a little more real.
The question is: which crisis or calamity in your career path was most transformative for you?
28/10/2025, 14:11 - Sacha:
So for anyone that’s been following my online publishing drama, yeah, so my previous publisher, the publisher that I launched Queer as Folklore with, went bust. I mean, all of the authors that were represented by Unbound lost their publisher.
It’s my first book that I’ve ever written, put years of work into it and a lot of good faith into it. And it really, really sucked because you have this book that’s doing really well, that you’re really proud of, and you’re not getting royalties for it. I think no one goes into writing books really these days thinking they’re going to be a millionaire, that’s not the purpose. You have to support yourself. You hope that there will be some recompense for the time that you’ve put in. So it was devastating, to be honest.
When you showed me the Fallen Tower, the Blasted Tower, I was thinking, oh, God, that makes me think of that time I got the email and I discovered my publisher had gone bust because I just had no idea what to do next. So I’d say that was awful.
What’s come out of it is that I have a new publisher. I’m incredibly lucky to have a new publisher… Manchester University Press, thank you very much. I have a multi-book deal with them, which means that I now get to write another book. I’m actually, bizarrely, I am in a better position than I was. I would never, you know, in no way… Unbound Going Bust was not a good thing. It destroyed a lot of people’s, you know, livelihoods. It was awful. It was awful for me.
But it’s weirdly resulted in me being with actually a better publisher and one that has, you know, is excited about my next idea. I’m now, you know, moving on to write other things. So I guess that’s the positivity I see there. It really was a crisis. It was a “Wow, have I just thrown three years away?” “This is so embarrassing” “How do I tell people?”
To now, in December, Queer as Folklore comes back out again and I get to make some future announcements, hopefully really soon. So it’s all coming out.
28/10/2025, 14:15 - Finbarre:
Ah, Manchester, my old university town, third favourite city in the world. And well done you. The Manchester University Press is a fantastic publisher. I can’t wait to see what you create with them. At the moment, if people want to read your work, where’s the best place they go?
28/10/2025, 14:17 - Sacha:
So very simply at the moment, go to Manchester University Press and pre-order a copy of Queer as Folklore. It’ll be coming out early on in December. That’s the best way to go about it.
There are probably a few copies of the previous edition still floating around in bookshops. Please do buy them. You know, I won’t see the proceeds to that, but it’s still, you know, I want people to read the book. I wrote it so it would be read, but directly to the publisher would be fab. Thank you very much.
28/10/2025, 14:20 - Finbarre:
I do really like that shade of yellow as well. It matches the entryway to my house perfectly. Right, we’re almost done. But before we go, do you have that tarot card to mind or one to hand that you could share?
28/10/2025, 14:21 - Sacha:
So I don’t have a tarot set to hand. I actually do have a set, but they’re back in London. I would like to pick The Magician, if that’s okay. That’s the one I’d like to push forward. I feel that that feels appropriately folkloric and yeah, I think that would be fun.
28/10/2025, 14:22 - Sacha: I just looked him up... OH DEAR!
28/10/2025, 14:23 - Finbarre:
Oh no no, dear sir, now that you’ve said it your wish is my command! I will make sure they get The Magician and I’ll make sure they know it comes from you.
Sacha Coward thank you so much for joining me on Tarot DMs today. Thank you for spending your time with us and before you go do tell me - how are you spending your Halloween?
28/10/2025, 14:24 - Sacha:
I’ve actually got quite a cool Halloween planned. I am going to be cosplaying basically as a vampire for an immersive experience at the Natural History Museum in London.
They’re doing a Vampire the Masquerade ball and I’m going to be one of the NPCs, so one of the characters that you kind of come across. So I have a ridiculous outfit to put together and hopefully it’s going to be a lot of fun. That sounds like some people’s idea of hell, but for me, getting to pretend to be a vampire for hours at night and scaring people. Wonderful!
Thanks so much for having me, Finbarre. It’s really been a lot of fun and apologies to whoever gets The Magician! I should definitely look up meanings before getting attracted by the aesthetics of it all. Do take care and have a wonderful Halloween yourself.
Sacha Coward’s Queer As Folklore - The Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters can be pre-ordered from the Manchester University Press here: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781807070397/
Thanks. Queer history's richness merits wider curiculum.