Polari Literary Salon

Jay Gadhia has always written things but the catalyst in spoken word poetry was attending an online men’s writing group during lockdown. He tends to focus on the Asian queer experience, his cultural / racial history, faith and the complications of relationships. He’s recently fallen in love with the haiku as a poetic format and written observational and comedic haikus that have been performed at spoken word open mic events. He’s enjoying the process of creating a narrative and performing as well as making friends with a whole new tribe.

Dillon Jaxx is a queer, chronically ill writer. Their work explores the aftermath of trauma, illness and grief as well as the meaning of home, family, identity and language. Their work has been published in Poetry Wales, Magma, Poetry Ireland Review and The Alchemy Spoon amongst others. Dillon has been placed and commended in numerous competitions and won the Rebecca Swift Writing Prize 2022, the Brotherton prize 2024, the Wolverhampton poetry competition 2024, the Live Canon International Poetry Competition 2025, the Artemisia Arts Prize 2025. Their debut collection like starlings falling is published by Nine Arches.

Chitra Ramaswamy is an author and journalist. Her latest book, Homelands: The History of a Friendship (Canongate) is a work of creative non-fiction exploring her friendship with a German Jewish refugee and Holocaust survivor called Henry Wuga. It won the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year and was included in The Guardian’s top memoirs and biographies of 2022. Her first book, Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy (Saraband) won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the Polari Prize, and was reissued in spring 2024. She has contributed essays to Antlers of Water, Nasty Women, The Freedom Papers, The Bi:ble, and Message from the Skies and produced a book of micro-essays, Rich Things, for the Alasdair Gray Archive. She writes for The Guardian, is the restaurant critic for The Times Scotland, broadcasts for BBC radio, and is currently working on her third book. She is from London and lives in Edinburgh.

Paul Burston is curator and host of award-winning LGBTQ+ literary salon Polari and founder of the Polari Prize book awards for LGBTQ+ writers, based at the British Library. In 2016, he featured in the British Council’s Global List of ’33 visionary people promoting freedom, equality and LGBT rights around the world’. Paul Burston is the author of six novels and five non-fiction books and the editor of two short-story collections. His memoir We Can Be Heroes: A Survivor’s Story (published by Little A) is a tale of living through two pandemics, surviving two near death experiences and battling his own demons.