![[all the] bst](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/e_trim:10:white/e_trim:10:transparent/h_72,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2d395873-88a7-4499-a321-96c4f5e6ad0d_1344x256.png)
[all the] bst is by me, Saraid Taylor, a writer and athlete. My literary novel Flinch is forthcoming with UQP and I am signed to the Melbourne Demons in the AFLW.
who is bst for?
bst is a dialogue across forms: interview, biography, essay, memoir, fiction and hybrid works.
It is for people who like sport, women’s sport, women’s basketball as sport, women, basketball, me.
It is also for people who like art.
why subscribe?
The project began as the secret journal of a professional athlete — a cumulative expression of love but also an indictment, equally layered with grief and celebration and fury and hope.
It wanted to be a platform that centred community and justice in conversations around performance, fame and power.
That is one half of bst: a space to analyse rumours, shave them to fact and then publish stories, from inside leagues and institutions, that have not been shared publicly before.
The other half of bst is the other half of me. I hold a Bachelor Degree of Fine Arts (Screenwriting) from the Victorian College of the Arts. My debut novel is slated for publication next year, and I have poetry and non/fiction printed or forthcoming in publications such as Overland, Meanjin, Island and Griffith Review. I have appeared at literary festivals and schools, and on radio, television, podcasts and panels. I have acted, directed, modelled and produced. I constantly and consistenly fail.
These two halves of the bysaraidtaylor project — sport and art — are often seen as antithetical.
They may have different languages but they interact with, and inform, each other. Both sport and art are vehicles: for growth, for change, for us to understand the world and share meaning. They cultivate connections. They forge empathy.
what do i get as a subscriber?
bst is a reader-supported publication, which means your support directly allows me to create more work.
The Monday Letter is released every Monday to all subscribers. It is a weekly wrap: a list of art consumed and recommended, reviews, announcements and snippets of upcoming work. It includes the Monday (Monthly) Letter, which arrives at the end of each month with my top book recommendations.
Full subscribers get the real juice: a long-form piece of work delivered to their inbox on the first Friday of every month.
These pieces are larger projects. They take more time to construct, require research and collaboration, and can look like:
An individual interview with someone like Michele Timms or Callum Brown;
A collective interview with a group, often of athletes, like Body of Work or Working Body;
A piece of fiction such as the face paintings or the labeller;
A personal essay like letters to the graduating class.
Or, the signature aspect of bst, an exposé. The most popular ones include:
A full subscription costs $12.50 a month. It can also cost nothing if paying for my writing is not currently within financial means for you — everyone is able to earn access by inviting friends through the referral program.
I am, with bst, not doing anything new.
There are innumerable women and non-binary people who have already spent so much time carving out space in environments that continue in many ways to resist them.
The biggest joy, and opportunity, this project gives is the ability to collaborate.
I want this to be a space that includes others and expands itself and is willing to grow and help grow. A space that craves critique and ideas and new perspectives — and breeds generosity. One of the truly poignant points of difference between men and women’s sport is the definition, and subsequent realisation, of what community means.
Community will be the solution to inequality. The answers, specifically for women’s sport and even more specifically for the WNBL, are already out there. Many, many athletes have voiced them, sometimes over and over again. It seems overdue for current and former basketball players — but also female athletes more generally — to stop having to repeat themselves.
bst is about more than sport and it is exactly about sport. Sport is a representation, an articulation, like art. These dialogues around fairness and safety and love stretch outside stadiums and ovals. They spread over continents, across histories.
The objective of bst is to become a space that consolidates and preserves and shares and, ultimately, utilises knowledge.
It aims to combine the vibrancy of both unique and similar experiences into a movement that can force change.
have a story?
bst is interested in important stories that do not always get the chance to be told. Submit a (substantiated) tip here. It can remain confidential.
new here?
Yay! Welcome. Take the new reader survey.
Saraid Taylor trains and writes on sacred Wurundjeri country. She acknowledges Elders, past and present, and extends that respect to all First Nations peoples around the world. Ten percent of all profit made from bysaraidtaylor subscriptions will be donated to Sisters Inside.
