Queer Debut Novel Showcase with Natalie Adler & Anna Goldreich

We're excited to introduce you to two fantastic queer debut novels: Waiting on a Friend and The Leveret.

Join us in conversation with Natalie Adler and Anna Goldreich.

Waiting on a Friend

The dazzling debut of ghosts and queer resistance set in 1980s New York.

East Village, summer of 1984. Renata is a young dyke-about-town who has the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS. So, when her best friend Mark dies, she assumes she'll see him again.

There's no way Mark wouldn't give her a chance to say goodbye, would he? But to her disappointment - and increasingly, her concern - Mark doesn't appear. Renata has other problems, too. A mysterious, police-like force has begun ridding their East Village neighbourhood of anything abnormal or inexplicable.

At first, she's sure they're scam artists, but it becomes clear they're actually trapping ghosts. With her band of lovably eccentric pals and lovers, Renata is determined to fight back against the erasure of her friends' memories and the sanitizing of her beloved New York. Both heartbreaking and healing, tragic and triumphant, Waiting on a Friend is a magical retelling of queer history and a celebration of youth and camaraderie.

With pathos and humour, empathy and an edge, Natalie Adler freshly reimagines the past for a new generation, reclaiming the spirit of resistance and determination that would become one of the era's defining legacies.

The Leveret

A heartbreakingly gorgeous and lyrically haunting debut novel about grief in the aftermath of baby loss and the power of queer love – perfect for fans of Julia Armfield, Sophie Mackintosh and Daisy Johnson

Moving to the countryside is supposed to fix Clare and Phoebe’s relationship. A fresh start, a change of scenery, a chance to heal after the miscarriage of their baby girl. Instead, Phoebe feels suffocated.

Back in the rural community she ran from at seventeen and unable to face the partner she cannot help, she throws herself into work on the family farm. Clare is a stranger in the village, uninitiated and out of place. She spends her days drifting around the cottage, its walls groaning and shifting as she withdraws into a world inside her head.

One day, wandering through the forest nearby, Clare finds a leveret – her own little Isla. A surrogate to lick and love. A way to feel whole again.

But as Isla grows into an adult hare she becomes wild and unruly – a kicking, biting, scratching creature. With Clare’s grasp on reality growing ever more tenuous, Phoebe begins to question whether Isla is the cure for grief Clare is searching for as she desperately clings on to the woman she loves .

With this bruisingly tender love story, debut author Anna Goldreich has conjured a hazy dream of a novel about the fantasies we create as a refuge from grief. The Leveret is a heartbreakingly gorgeous and lyrically haunting hymn to queer love and the power to rebuild from the wreckage of a relationship.

Doors: 6.45pm

Event Start: 7pm