Crossing the Lines (2021)

In Crossing the Lines, Brent Coutts brings to light the previously untold history of New Zealand homosexual soldiers in World War II, drawing on the experiences of ordinary men who lived through extraordinary times.

At the centre of the story are New Zealand soldiers Harold Robinson, Ralph Dyer and Douglas Morison, who shared a queer identity and love of performance. Through their roles as female impersonators in Kiwi concert parties in the Pacific and Egypt they found a place to live as gay men within the military forces, boosting the morale of personnel in the Pacific Campaign and, along the way, falling in love with some of the men they met.

Crossing the Lines is a richly illustrated account that follows the men from their formative pre-war lives, through the difficult wartime years to their experiences living in a postwar London where they embraced the many new possibilities available. It is a story of strong friendships, the search for love and belonging as homosexuals within the military and civilian worlds, and the creation of the foundation of the queer community today.

Re-Reading the Rainbow (2017)

While this is a record of a key LGBTQ+ group art exhibition held in 2015 in Auckland, and the context of staging the exhibition, the writing by Brent Coutts establishes an historical relationship between past and present. It is a survey of the historical narrative of LGBTQ+ artists and exhibitions that covers the period of the Gay Liberation Movement in New Zealand until 1992 when the Implicated and Immune - Artists Responses to AIDS exhibition took place. Coutts chronicles the issues of exclusion and growing inclusion of LGBTQ+ artists in New Zealand.

1972 A Year in Focus: Gay Liberation and the Photography of John Miller and Max Oettli (2022)

A multi-sectional book, in five parts, 1972 A Year in Focus: Gay Liberation and the Photography of John Miller and Max Oettli (2022) is an in-depth historical narrative of the establishment of the Gay Liberation Movement in New Zealand and the Movement's activities in the first year of activism. Coutts conducted interviews, wrote an extended essay, collected photographs and located many primary documents which are reproduced in the book to discuss the 12 months that changed the social and sexual outlook of New Zealand life. A new era of political visibility and assertiveness is outlined – and the beginning of an assertion of legitimacy and inclusion. While Ngahuia Volkerling’s (now Te Awekotuku) crucial role is established, Coutts reconfigures many stories – and reveals many people whose significant achievements have been overlooked. People like Malcolm McAllister, Dick Morrison, Janet Roth, Caterina De Nave and Sharon Alston, Robin Duff, Lindsay Taylor, Nigel Baumer, Micheal Ross and Rae Dellaca, who have been all but erased from the historic record, are given a voice. Coutts broadens this from an 'Auckland story' to a national narrative, discussing events in Christchurch and Wellington. The book includes the visual record of events with documentary photographs by John Miller of the first ‘Gay Day Happening’ in Albert Park, Auckland on 11 April 1972, and photographs by Max Oettli of the first gay liberation ‘zap’ direct-action protest which took place at the Office of the Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Auckland on 17 April 1972.

Pacific History (2018)

Pacific History (2018) explores contested events that have impacted on the people in the Pacific and shaped their place in the modern world. Chapters include:

1. Tonga: Conversion and Unification
2. Hawai’i: Revolution and Annexation by the United States of America
3. Niue: New Zealand’s Annexation
4. Sāmoa: The Civil Wars and the Mau Movement
5. Vanuatu: The Santo Rebellion
6. New Caledonia: The Civil Wards
7. Fiji: From Cession to Coup d’état
8. Pasifika in New Zealand: Migration, Dawn Raids and the Polynesian Panther Movement

Protest In New Zealand (2013)

Throughout New Zealand’s history, individuals and groups have been impelled to seek change and achieve social justice through the medium of protest. In Protest in New Zealand (2013) Coutts and co-author Nicholas Fitness provide an in-depth look at protest movements during the 20th century, focusing on their causes and effects, and the events and people that drove them. They cover strikes by the union movement in 1912,1913 and 1951, anti-militarism / anti-conscription protest, Depression era protest, Anti-Vietnam War, Second Wave of Feminism protest and Gay Liberation Movement protest in the 1970s and 1980s.

Charlie Rose & Peter Brown: The gay artist and his lover (2023)

Charlie Rose & Peter Brown: The gay artist and his lover (2023) is the result of research into a hidden history that uncovers the lives of two 20th century gay men in New Zealand. This time the focus is on portraits of Auckland-based artist Charles (Charlie) Rose, who graduated from Elam art school in Auckland in 1958. Specifically, the writing explores Rose's self-portraiture and his portraits of his lifelong partner Peter Brown. They met in 1968 and remained together until Rose died in 2017. Author Brent Coutts outlines Rose's life before he met Peter Brown and then their life together. Discussion on the portriats is woven throughout the narrative. A poem by Peter Brown, written when Rose died, adds a poignant footnote at the end of the book.

Brent Coutts' opening lines make the focus clear. "Queer artists are orphans of a different stripe. They have no conventional genealogy or lineage, no family history or record. Acknowedging those who come before creates a collective whakapapa for the queer community, and in doing so provides the queer artist a standing place - a turangawaewae in art history." This book expands and affirms a New Zealand queer art history narrative.   

This multi-sectional book, designed by artist George Hajian (with assistance from Sammy Good), includes Coutts’s narrative and a comprehensive spread of colour reproductions of the portraits, as well as two sections that are not bound into the main book. This is done deliberately to, literally and figuratively, subvert a ‘straight reading’ and encourage the reader to engage in the book, having to turn the pages to the side to read Brent Coutts’ writing, or having to unfold the facsimiles of letters Charlie Rose wrote to Peter Brown in 1972.