Today we will have several LGBT+ writers, a choir, and readings from letters and poetry.

 Doors open 1.00

Tea, coffee and cake available. Bring your own lunch if you wish. Large LGBT+ bookstall, exhibition space, information from LGBT+ groups.

Tickets are £5.00 (including refreshments) in advance, £6.00 on the door for all or part of the afternoon

Click here to book via Eventbrite

The first time slot offers a choice… apologies if  you want to attend both!

1.30-2.30 Sabah Choudrey on Supporting Trans People of Colour, discussing how to make LGBT+ (and other spaces and services) more inclusive

1.30-2.30 Simon Smalley will be talking about his book That Boy of Yours Wants Looking At, a memoir of growing up gay and working class in the old St Ann’s estate in Nottingham

2.45-3.45 Who do you love? Who do you care for? Readings from well known and less well known LGBT+ poets and writers followed by Singing Proud – Nottingham’s LGBT+ choir 

The third time slot offers a choice… apologies if  you want to attend both!

4.00-5.00 Lauren Owen reads from her new gothic mystery novel Small Angels with Francesca May reading from her fantasy Wild and Wicked Things, with both writers then in conversation

4.00-5.00 Alison Oram on Queer Beyond London, looking at life outside the London bubble, especially queer life in Leeds, Manchester, Plymouth and Brighton

Tickets: £5.00 for all or part of the afternoon via Eventbrite booking, £6.00 on the day

Teas and coffees included

Simply join the sessions that interest you.

Venue: St John’s Church and Community Centre, Mansfield Road, Carrington, Nottingham  (stjohnscarrington.org.uk). Many buses stop just before the church, all those going to Sherwood and Arnold for example. There is car parking at Pirate Park next door on Mansfield Road and on street parking nearby, but please allow time to find your space. The venue is fully accessible including toilets and baby changing facilities.

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Supporting Trans People of Colour provides an introduction to issues around People of Colour (POC) trans inclusion. Trans people of colour are often excluded because gender and race are treated as separate issues. They are therefore left out from movements and services and in trans and non-binary spaces, their POC identities are overlooked. Sabah introduces intersectionality from the start, giving steps to ensure that the community as a whole may be represented and creates a safer space for trans people of colour to thrive. Sabah was previously published in Five Leaves’ Unorthodox: LGBT+ Identity and Faith

That Boy of Yours Wants Looking At is about love, loss, adversity, and acceptance. At its core is a child with a wild imagination and a desire for glamour trying to survive being gay and disabled on a Nottingham council estate in the sixties and seventies. Simon takes us on a humorous, riotously colourful, and heart-rending journey through  bereavement and his childhood years being raised by an RAF dad who encouraged his boy to be his true self. Simon’s tale of self-expression through music and his battle with his body, self-esteem, and paranoia is an account of what it takes to live authentically.

Queer Beyond London: When it comes to queer British history, London has stolen the limelight. But what about the millions of queer lives lived elsewhere? Queer beyond London takes you on a journey through four English cites from the sixties to the noughties, exploring the northern post-industrial heartlands and taking in the salty air of the seaside cities of the South. Covering the bohemian world of Brighton, the semi-hidden queer life of military Plymouth, the lesbian activism of Leeds, and the dance and drag scenes of Manchester, they show how local people, places and politics shaped LGBTQ+ life in each city. Alison will talk about the local stories at the heart of our national history. There will also be mention of some Nottingham “firsts”, when our local LGBT+ community showed the way.

In the aftermath of the First World War, in Francesca May’s novel, a young woman gets swept into a glittering world filled with illicit magic, romance, blood debts and murder in this lush and decadent debut novel. On Crow Island, people whispered, real magic lurked just below the surface. But Annie Mason never expected her enigmatic new neighbour to be a witch. When she witnesses a confrontation between her best friend Bea and the infamous Emmeline Delacroix at one of Emmeline’s extravagantly illicit parties, Annie is drawn into a glittering, haunted world. A world where magic can buy what money cannot; a world where the consequence of a forbidden blood bargain might be death.