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# Birmingham Literature Festival to celebrate queer writing
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/birmingham-literature-festival-to-celebrate-queer-writing/
- Published: 2022-09-20T16:00:53.000Z
- Updated: 2022-09-20T10:48:41.000Z
- Description: Two of the UK’s “most exciting voices in queer writing” will come together during Birmingham Literature Festival to discuss “their novels, their writing and the LGBTQ+ writing scene, which is finally seeing the celebration it deserves.”
- Author: Catherine Muxworthy
- Tags: Arts, Books, Birmingham, LGBT, LGBTQ, queer, West Midlands

Two of the UK’s “most exciting voices in queer writing” will come together during **Birmingham Literature Festival** to discuss “their novels, their writing and the LGBTQ+ writing scene, which is finally seeing the celebration it deserves.”

Chaired by guest curator **Paul McVeigh**, the event will feature **Julia Armfield**, author of *Our Wives Under the Sea* – which is her first novel following the success of her critically acclaimed short story collection, *Salt Slow*. Julia will be joined in conversation by Birmingham-based writer **Paul Mendez**, whose début novel, *Rainbow Milk* was published in 2020.

Julia Armfield is a fiction writer and playwright who was shortlisted for the 2019 **Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year**, commended in the **Moth Short Story Prize** 2017, longlisted for the **Deborah Rogers Award** 2018, and won the **White Review Short Story Prize** in 2018\. Her novel, *Our Wives Under the Sea,* is a story of love, loss and grief that follows the relationship between Miri and her wife Leah, after Leah returns home from a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe, leaving her with a darkness that she carries back with her onto dry land, causing her to slip from Miri’s loving grasp.

Paul Mendez is a British writer whose début novel, *Rainbow Milk,* was an **Observer Best Debuts** **Choice**, and was shortlisted for several prizes, including: the **Polari First Novel Prize**, the **Gordon Burn Prize**, the **Jhalak Prize**, the **Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction** and a **British Book Award** (**Fiction Debut**). The novel is a coming-of-age tale about nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy – a Black, gay, British boy from Wolverhampton who moves to London on the cusp of adulthood. In *Rainbow Milk,* Jesse struggles with his Jehovah’s Witness upbringing, alongside his racial and sexual identity. Paul Mendez is currently working on adapting the novel for TV, plus he is also a student on the MA programme in Black British Literature at **Goldsmiths**, University of London.

The event with Julia Armfield and Paul Mendez will be held at **Birmingham Rep Theatre** on **Saturday, October 8** from **2 – 3pm**. Tickets **£8** (**£6.40** concession). Birmingham Literature Festival will be held **October 6 – 9**, and tickets to all their events are available [online](https://www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org/?ref=scenemag.co.uk).