The UK’s only LGBTQ+ literary festival – Brighton’s the Coast Is Queer – returns for its fourth season in October, bringing together a line-up of nationally and internationally-known queer writers, poets, performers and activists for four days of events in the city.
Highlights of the festival:
Thursday, October 12: best-selling novelist, screenwriter and journalist Juno Dawson holds a conversation with a leading trans writer – and this year it’s Harry Nicholas, writer/campaigner and author of A Trans Man Walks Into a Gay Bar.
Friday, October 13: a showcase of some of Brighton’s best queer voices are at open mic event Rewriting Queerness. It’s hosted by Fuchia Von Steele, and poets Reanna Valentine, AFLO the poet, and Priss Nash. Also on October 13 is an exhibition and performance called Unknown Soldier with Seni Seneviratne. It’s a moving one-woman performance and multi-media installation bringing to life the hidden family narrative of this poet/artist and her father’s experience as a Royal Signalman in the North African Desert War.
And still on Friday, there’s a panel discussion – The True Homosexual Love, which features the work of Mark Hyatt. Mark was a bold, experimental, sexually explicit poet who whose book So Much For Life presents a major lost voice of queer literature. Born in South London in 1940 from a Romani background, Hyatt was largely overlooked and died in 1972. His manuscript survived and his reputation grew by word of mouth and inclusion in queer anthologies. Writers and activists Fran Lock and So Mayer will read from his works and lead an audience discussion.
Saturday, October 14: The crème de la crème of queer cabaret and spoken word talent perform for you at Quills and Thrills, featuring Liv Wynter, Felix Mufti, Erin James and Wildblood and Queenie, in a show presented by Marlborough Productions.
Sunday, October 15: a panel discusses what it means to be a queer writer in a time of war, when being visibly queer in your own country is an act of rebellion.
Lesley Wood, Festival co-ordinator said: “The Coast Is Queer is a unique opportunity for audiences to meet some of the boldest and brightest LGBTQ+ writers, thinkers and activists around today.”
The festival is at the Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts 12-15 October.
Full information HERE
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