Kim Torrejas: Fucking straight

What happens when the majority suddenly becomes the minority? In Damn Straight, Kim Torrejas lets us experience norm pressure from the other side, where liking the "wrong" gender suddenly becomes a risky sport – a sharp, funny and moving young adult novel that is both touching and heartwarming.

In the village of Vrangvik, there is one thing that applies: You have to be gay. Everything else is weird. When Ask realizes that he likes girls, his life is turned upside down. Suddenly, he risks becoming the school's new "straight" - and thus the one who doesn't fit in.

Damn Straight is an honest, funny and thought-provoking novel about identity, friendship and the pressure of norms. With an effective and original approach, Torrejas lets us see our own reality from the inside out: What happens to us when the majority becomes the minority? The result is both entertaining satire and a warm story about finding out who you are in a world that would rather you be someone else.

On Friday, April 17, we will meet Kim Torrejas at the Literature House in Trondheim for a conversation about her debut novel, about writing young adult literature that challenges norms – and about why sometimes it takes an inverted world to see our own more clearly.

Kim Torrejas (1993) is from Fredrikstad, but now lives in Oslo. He works as a teacher, and during his studies he delved into queer themes and wrote a master's degree on the use of film and literature for intercultural learning. Damn Hetero (2025) is his debut novel.