This Fall (autumn…) lovers of the best of queer writing will be heading to Britain’s South Coast for two fab literary events
The first is WRITING OURSELVES IN as part of the 51st Annual RYE ARTS Festival 2022. This is held In the town that was home to ancestral homos Henry James and E.F,Benson there is a celebration of hidden queer histories illuminated in contemporary queer stories. With poet and performer Joelle Taylor, whose collection Cunto + Othered Stories won the TS Eliot Prize 2022, Costa Prize shortlisted writer and director Neil Bartlett, whose mosaic novel Address Book was published in 2021, and Sam Kenyon, writer of the RSC’s Miss Littlewood, whose debut novel I Am Not Raymond Wallace is published in September. Expect live readings and lively discussions. Chaired by Nathan Evans, editor of Inkandescent—shortlisted for Small Press of 2022 in the British Book Awards.
Friday 23rd September 2022 @15.00 The Brewery Yard, Landgate, Rye TN31 7LH
The second event is THE COAST IS QUEER Brighton & Hove’s celebration of LGBTQ+ writing, which returns for an in-person festival from 7-9 October 2022. Now in its third year, The Coast is Queer brings together writers, poets, performers, academics, activists and readers for three days of accessible, lively in-conversation events, workshops, films and discussions celebrating queer lives and literature.
This year, guest speakers include Sussex alumni Verity Spott (Gideon, Click Away Close Door Say, We Will Bury You) and Elizabeth Chakrabarty (Lessons in Love and Other Crimes), the Devil’s Dyke Network Poets featuring a large number of Sussex alumni, Sussex faculty Dr Sara Jane Bailes and Helen Dixon. The festival will also host Sarah Winman (InWords Literary Award, Still Life), Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller (Bad Gays: A Homosexual History), and screenwriter and Sunday Times number 1 bestseller Juno Dawson (Her Majesty’s Royal Coven) will also be returning with another edition of her Lovely Trans Literary Salon, this time featuring award-winning writer, performer and theatre maker, Travis Alabanza (None of The Above).
The festival offers events ranging from Panel: Queers in the library, which will be chaired by Dr Alice Corble from the University of Sussex Library, to Workshop: Cruising nature with Declan Wiffen and Saturday night out with Dj Ritu, Livia Kojo Alour, Charlie Wood and Devil’s Dykes Network Poets, and much more.
The Coast Is Queer 7-9 OCTOBER 2022 Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts University of Sussex< Brighton BN1 9RA
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