Described as a party cabaret where the performers are actually writers, Polari Literary Salon returns to the festival to showcase the best new and established LGBTQ+ talent via a high-energy and always thought-provoking evening. Paul Burston (The Closer I Get) will be joined by Jill Nalder (Love from the Pink Palace), Diana Souhami (No Modernism Without Lesbians) and poet Adam Lowe for a lively event that is guaranteed to inspire and enchant.

Please note this venue is inaccessible for wheelchair users and people with mobility challenges.

About The Authors

Headshot of author Jill Nalder stood in front of a backdrop of trees

Jill Nalder

Jill Nalder is originally from Neath, South Wales. She is a successful West End actress and was the inspiration behind Jill Baxter’s character in Russell T. Davies’ Channel 4 programme IT’S A SIN. She was also one of the founders and first chairperson of West End Cares, now called Theatre MAD: Make A Difference. To date the charity has raised over £10 million for HIV/AIDS. 

Headshot of Diana Souhami

Diana Souhami

Diana Souhami is the author of Gluck: Her Biography, Gertrude and Alice, Greta and Cecil, The Trials of Radclyffe Hall (shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Biography and winner of the US Lambda Literary Award), Wild Girls, the bestselling Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter (also winner of the Lambda Literary Award and a New York Times `Notable Book of the Year’), Selkirk’s Island (winner of the Whitbread Biography award), Coconut Chaos, Edith Cavell (winner of the EDP-Jarrold East Anglian Book of the Year award), Murder at Wrotham Hill (shortlisted for the Crime Writers’ Association gold dagger for non-fiction) and the novel Gwendolen. She is a Rainbow List National Treasure and she lives in London.

Headshot of poet, Adam Lowe

Adam Lowe

Adam Lowe is the UK’s LGBT+ History Month Poet Laureate and Yorkshire’s Olympic Poet for 2012. He is a writer and performer who grew up in the Leeds wards of Chapeltown and Armley, though he currently lives on t’other side of the Pennines, in sunny Salford. Adam has taught at the University of Leeds and the University of Central Lancashire, and has worked with The Poetry School and English PEN. He was named one of the ’20 best writers under 40′ in Leeds for the LS13 Awards and his chapbook Precocious was a reader nomination for the Guardian First Book Prize. He was a finalist for the Venture Poetry Awards, Eric Hoffer Award and Lambda Literary Awards, and was mentored by Patience Agbabi for The Complete Works II programme, founded by Bernardine Evaristo. He is also an alumnus of Obsidian, an international residential for Black poets. In 2023, his debut full-length collection PATTERFLASH! will be published by Peepal Tree Press.

About The Speaker

Paul Burston

Paul Burston is the author of six novels including his latest, The Closer I Get. He is the curator and host of Polari LGBT+ literary salon and the founder and chair of The Polari Prize for LGBT writers.