About

The Coast is Queer returns to Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts this 15-18 October.

The UK’s Biggest and Brightest Festival of LGBTQ+ Literature has a lineup packed to the rafters with leading lights of LGBTQ+ literature from across the UK and beyond.

The festival creates a much-needed space for queer readers, writers and allies to come together in a grassroots celebration of the written word and its ability to illuminate and enrich the life of our community.

Confirmed writers include Shon Faye, Susan Stryker, Sarah Waters, Thomas Glave, Kirsty Logan, Dean Atta, Nikita Gill, Julia Armfield, Juno Dawson, Patrick Gale, Arathi Menon, Claire Lynch, Jamie Hale, Jason Okundaye, Jessica and Claudia Kellgren-Fozard, Majid Parsa, Louise Welsh, Megan Jane Crabbe, myndstate, Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, Santanu Bhattacharya, Rozie Kelly, Tareq Baconi, Fin MacKay, Ray Filar and many more.

Writers will discuss living and loving in countries where queerness is illegal or unsafe, queer masculinities, obsession and addiction and queer disability through history. They will re/claim queer spaces - in bookshops, in nature, in the suburbs and in stately homes, and they will introduce the occasional queer witch. Student-curated panels will explore radical self-publishing and the ethical and creative struggles in writing hidden queer histories. Local poets will once again be featured.

A programme of panel discussions and workshops will help demystify the publishing industry for LGBTQ+ writers and creative workshops in the library will include Horror Writing with Kirsty Logan, Crime Writing with Louise Welsh, zine workshops with Erin James and Resonating Ground: A workshop for Global Majority Writers with Olumide Popoola.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt will be on show in the Meeting House throughout the weekend with a daily reading of the names, and poetry performances.

The Coast is Queer Ticket Competition for Sussex Students

University of Sussex students can enter a competition to win tickets to this year's The Coast is Queer Festival, with the following prizes on offer:

• Grand prize: 2 x festival passes
• Runners up: 10 x Friday day passes - this year's Friday line up features University of Sussex Student Curators. You can find out more here.

To be in with a chance of winning one of the above prizes, all you need to do is enter your University of Sussex email address via the following form:

Enter the competition.

The deadline for entering is Tuesday 13 October at 11:59pm. Winners will be contacted by email with details of their prize the following day.

Don’t forget, even if you don’t win one of the festival passes, you can still purchase student-rate tickets to events for just £2!