Invisible Boys

An emotional tale of identity, sexuality and suicide derived from personal experience about three teenage boys who struggle to come to terms with their homosexuality in a small Western Australian town. On the surface, nerd Zeke, punk Charlie and footy wannabe Hammer look like they have nothing in common. But scratch that surface and you’d find three boys in the throes of coming to terms with their homosexuality in a town where it is invisible. Invisible Boys is a raw, confronting YA novel that explores the complexities and trauma of rural gay identity with painful honesty, devastating consequences and, ultimately, hope.

Holden Sheppard is a YA author originally from Geraldton, Western Australia. After graduating from ECU’s writing program, Holden won a prestigious ArtStart grant from the Australia Council for the Arts in 2015. Invisible Boys won the 2017 Ray Koppe Residency Award, resulting in a writing residency at Varuna, the Writers’ House, in early 2018 and was also Highly Commended in the ASA Emerging Writers’ Mentorship Prize 2018. His short fiction and journalism has been published in indigo, Page Seventeen, Huffington Post, ABC, DNA Magazine, and Faster Louder. His novella Poster Boys was selected for The Novella Project VI and was published in Griffith Review 62: All Being Equal.