You can celebrate 30 years of DIVA at this celebration of LGBTQIA writing
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGES BY LEE BAXTER, CHRISTA HOLKA, LEONIE+MCQUILLN, EIVIND+HANSEN
The UK’s biggest festival of LGBTQIA Literature is back once again! The Coast Is Queer will be running between 10-13 October at Brighton’s Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts to celebrate queer storytelling.
Established in 2019, The Coast Is Queer champions LGBTQIA authors and readers through a jam-packed schedule of workshops, panels, events, and more.
This year’s festivities are being kicked off with a very special event celebrating 30 years of DIVA on 10 October. Chaired by Paula Akpan, this panel will feature our very own editor-in-chief Roxy Bourdillon, Gay Times’ Reeta Loi, and Attitude’s Matthew Todd.
Here’s what else you can expect from this one-of-a-kind celebration.
Friday 11 October
- Panels: Queer Fantasy Writing and Writing Queer Stories for Multiple Generations
- Workshops: Pitching to Agents, Self-Publishing, and Reading and Performing for Live Audiences
- Politics and Hope: Leah Cowan, Amelia Abraham and Sharan Dhaliwal
- Queer Nightlife: Historians, DJs and authors Daren Kay & Alf Le Flohic, Dan Glass, and DJ Paulette
- Poetry Open Mic Night: AFLO the Poet
Saturday 12 October
- Liberating the Queer Canon: H Gareth Gavin, Adam Macqueen and Julia Armfield
- Writing for Performance: Matilda Feyisayo Ibini, Charlie Josephine and Alexis Gregory
- Environmental Writing: Roma Wells, Mike Parker and Natasha Carthew
- Queer Parenting: Lotte Jeffs, Stu Oakley and Ben Fergusson
- Decolonising Futures: Saleem Haddad, lisa luxx and Sophie Chamas
- Screening of Saleem Haddad’s stunning film Marco with a Q&A
- Lovely Trans Literary Salon with Juno Dawson and Kuchenga Shenjé
- David Hoyle Does The Classics Cabaret
- Workshops: Print Workshop, a Work in Progress Breakfast, a Private Rites Book Club, and book launch for Lea Anderson’s Cholmondeleys & Featherstonehaughs
Sunday 13 October
- Queer Memoir: Dean Atta, Karen McLeod and Juano Diaz, chaired by literary agent Abi Fellows
- Celebration of James Baldwin’s Life and Work: Mendez and Douglas Field, chaired by Campbell X
- Radical Hope: a smorgasbord of spoken word, performance, films, activities and
- keynotes
More events and guests to be announced later this month. For more information go to: coastisqueer.com
DIVA magazine celebrates 30 years in print in 2024. If you like what we do, then get behind LGBTQIA media and keep us going for another generation. Your support is invaluable.