Aye Write is back in Glasgow from 12-29 March with all the best in fiction, politics, poetry, crime & thriller, memoir, history, music and more from around Scotland and the world.
Some of the lgbtq+ highlights are below we will have bring you interviews with the writers and reviews of the their books over the weeks in the lead up to the start of Aye Write festival.
Amelia Abraham, Queer Intentions
19th Mar 2020 • 6:00PM - 7:00PM • Mitchell Library
Combining intrepid journalism with her own personal experience, Amelia Abraham searches for what it means to be queer in 2019.
Combining intrepid journalism with her own personal experience, Amelia Abraham searches for what it means to be queer in 2019. With curiosity, good humour and disarming openness, Amelia takes the reader on a thought-provoking and entertaining journey. Join her as she cries at the first same-sex marriage in Britain, loses herself in the world's biggest drag convention in L.A., marches at Pride parades across Europe, visits both a transgender model agency and the Anti-Violence Project in New York to understand the extremes of trans life today and meets a genderless family in progressive Stockholm
Val McDermid & Jo Sharp - Imagine a Country
24th Mar 2020 • 6:30PM - 8:00PM • Mitchell Theatre
Val McDermid & Jo Sharp with Phil Jupitus, Jackie Kay, Chris Brookmyre, Louise Welsh, Stuart Cosgrove and Bill Sweeney
Join Val McDermid and Jo Sharp, with their special guests as they dream of a future country. Imagine a Country collects essays and artwork from all spectrums of Scottish life – from comedians to economists, writers to musicians, visual artists to academics, and asks them to share their hopes for a future Scotland. Each guest will present their dream for the future of Scotland – be it abandoning capitalism or reforming education, reforesting our land, revolutionising the care system or focusing on philosophy to bring rational level-headed discussion back to the forefront of politics, before discussing the collection as a panel.
Michael Cashman, From Albert Square to Parliament Square
25th Mar 2020 • 6:30PM - 7:30PM • Mitchell Library
The autobiography of the Eastenders actor, MEP and campaigner.
Michael Cashman has lived many lives, all of them remarkable: as a beloved actor on stage and screen; as a campaigner for gay rights; as an MEP and as a life peer. He found his most defining role as Colin in Eastenders, making television history as one half of the first gay kiss ever broadcast on a British soap. His autobiography One of Them contains glorious nostalgia, wicked showbiz gossip, a stirring history of a civil rights movement, a sorrowfully clear-eyed exposition of Britain's standing in Europe, and an unforgettable love story.
Casey Gerald, There Will be No Miracles Here
27th Mar 2020 • 6:00PM - 7:00PM • Mitchell Library
Casey Gerald goes from going up gay in Dallas to an Ivy League college, power on Wall Street and Washington DC.
Growing up gay in an ordinary black neighbourhood in Dallas, his parents struggling with mental health problems and addiction, Casey Gerald finds himself on a remarkable path to a prestigious Ivy League college, to the inner sanctums of power on Wall Street and in Washington DC. But even as he attains everything the American Dream promised him, Casey comes to see that salvation stories like his own are part of the plan to keep others from rising. Intense and shot through with sly humour and quiet fury, There Will Be No Miracles Here is his extraordinary memoir.