ONLINE: Polari LGBTQ+ Literary Salon

Thursday 4 August, 7.30pm-8.30pm

Venue: Online

Ticket price: free (booking required)

Age guidance: 16+

An online showcase of wonderfully talented LGBTQ+ writers of South Asian heritage. With readings and discussion from debut author Tufayel Ahmed, poet Nikita Gill and author, influencer and speaker Raga D’Silva.

Paul Burston’s fabulous literary salon Polari has been championing the best in LGBTQ+ writing and poetry since 2007.

NOTE: Booking required: a link to access this webinar will be sent to you the day before the event. 

Tufayel Ahmed is an award-winning journalist, author and lecturer. In his debut novel, This Way Out, Amar discovers that announcing his engagement on a group chat might not have been the best way to let his strict Muslim Bangladeshi family know that his partner is a man―and a white man at that. As his bombshell sends shockwaves through the community, Amar stars to question everything he once believed in.

Nikita Gill is a Kashmiri Sikh poet, playwright, writer and illustrator, born in Belfast, raised in India and now living in the south of England. She has published six collections of poetry: Wild Embers, Your Heart is the Sea, Your Soul Is A River, Fierce Fairytales, Great Goddesses and Where Hope Comes From. She is the editor of the poetry anthology SLAM! and a novel in verse, The Girl and Goddess.

Raga D’Silva is an award-winning entrepreneur, Director of India’s largest international speaker-marketing agency Speaking Minds and host of online talk shows From the Other Side and My Pride Your Pride. She is a much sought-after speaker on subjects such as Unconscious Bias and Diversity & Inclusion. Her book, Untold Lies: Storyoems – When Stories Become Poems, is a collection of emotional and poignant writing about truth and hope.

Paul Burston is the author of six novels, including domestic noir thrillers The Black Path and The Closer I Get and several non-fiction books. Paul is curator and host of award-winning LGBTQ+ literary salon Polari and founder of The Polari First Book Prize for debut writers and The Polari Prize for established writers. In 2016, he featured in the British Council’s Global List of “33 visionary people promoting freedom, equality and LGBT rights around the world”.