Description
For centuries, queer people, women and disabled bodies have been cast as unnatural, hysterical and excessive and made the very essence of horror. But what happens when we reclaim the monster?
Bestselling authors Lucy Rose (The Lamb), Jessie Elland (The Ladie Upstairs), and Charlotte Paradise (Overspill) join us for a fierce, immersive conversation on the gothic genre tradition as a battleground for bodies that refuse to behave.
Together, we’ll explore how gothic fiction turns stigma into power, rage into art and otherness into defiance. From bodily transformation to social exile, the gothic exposes the violence of ableism and patriarchy and dares to imagine survival beyond them.
Dark, unsettling and unapologetically political, this event asks: who gets to be human and who benefits from calling the rest of us monstrous?
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About the Authors
Lucy Rose
Cumbrian dwelling in the North East. Writer of folktales and fables.
Lucy Rose’s fiction and non-fiction have been published by Dread Central, Mslexia, The Observer, The Nerd Daily and more, and her films have visited BAFTA- and Oscar-qualifying film festivals internationally. She is also a Forbes Under 30, a Books Are My Bag Fiction Award Shortlistee and a Nota Bene Award Finalist.
Lucy’s Sunday Times Bestselling debut novel, The Lamb, is published by W&N Books in the UK and Harper in the US. It was selected for Foyles Book of the Month, named best debut novel of 2025 by Cosmopolitan and Spotify, chosen for Dakota Johnson’s Tea Time Book Club, became a Goodreads Choice Award Finalist and Netgalley’s Literary Fiction Novel of the Year 2025.
Lucy lives on the north-east coast of England with her black cat, Figgy, and is currently working on her next story.
Jessie Elland
Jessie Elland is an actress and author from the North East of England. An avid bookworm from the moment she could read, Jessie spent most of her childhood dreaming of writing books and scribbling down half-finished stories. The Ladie Upstairs is her first novel to be published (and finished!)
Charlotte Paradise
Charlotte Paradise is a Disabled writer whose debut novel, Overspill, published with Akan Books (HarperCollins) in April 2025.
Her short film, Sleepyhead, world premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in 2023. It’s won 6 awards and been nominated at multiple festivals in 2024, including internationally. Her debut short film, Chronic, was also selected and nominated at BIFA qualifying festivals.
She’s represented for books by Ludo Cinelli at Eve White Literary Agency.
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