Press

Gay's The Word is London's only gay, lesbian and feminist bookshop and this year it celebrates 40 years of serving the LGBTQ+ community. Take a look behind the scenes and hear about its storied history as well as meeting the characters that make it a unique part of London's LGBTQ+ culture. Video by Paul Murphy-Kasp. Subscribe to BBC London here: https://bit.ly/2Gd18gB Check out BBC London for more: https://bbc.in/2JssOge Like us on Facebook: https://bit.ly/2fz7mZ3 Follow us on Twitter: https://bit.ly/2DOhFWq

Founded in 1979, Gay's The Word has been a meeting space for the LGBT community for decades. It is a jewel in the bookshop landscape of London. We took a look around and spoke to the staff.

An evening of conversation, stories and author readings Please watch me in HD. Rikki Beadle Blair, VG Lee, Gregory Woods, Neil McKenna, Kirsty Logan, Juno Dawson, Philip Hensher, Jay Bernard, Richard Scott, Mary Jean Chan, Keith Jarrett and Andrew McMillan with video messages from Sarah Waters, Edmund White, Armistead Maupin, and Neil Bartlett. The British Libray 22 February 2019. Uli Lennart hosts an evening of conversation, poetry, stories and author readings from a range of special guests, to mark the 40th anniversary of the iconic bookshop, Gay’s the Word. Created to be a community resource as well as a bookshop, it is famed for nurturing the curiosity and wellbeing of the LGBT+ community. Surviving police raids, book seizures and homophobic harassment, today it is celebrated as a much-loved London institution with an international reputation. Gay’s the Word, in Bloomsbury, was founded in early 1979 and named after the last musical written by Ivor Novello. It was the UK’s first dedicated lesbian and gay bookshop. Numerous groups have met at the bookshop throughout its history. From 1984 to 1985 Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners convened there and collected money outside, as immortalized in the 2014 film Pride. Juno Dawson is an author of dark teen thrillers. Her first non-fiction book, Being a Boy, tackled puberty, sex and relationships in a frank and funny fashion, and a follow-up for young LGBT people, This Book is Gay. Her book, The Gender Games, is her look at gender and what that it means in science, society, media and culture today. Juno is a regular contributor to Attitude Magazine, GT and the Guardian, lives in Brighton and writes full time. Philip Hensher’s novels include Kitchen Venom, which won the Somerset Maugham Award, Other Lulus and The Mulberry Empire. The Northern Clemency was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008 and Scenes From Early Life won the 2013 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. Philip is also a columnist for the Independent and chief book reviewer for the Spectator. He lives in South London. UK poetry slam champion and Rio International Poetry Slam Winner, Keith Jarrett is a PhD scholar at Birkbeck University, where he is completing his first novel. His monologue, Safest Spot in Town, was aired on BBC Four, and his book of poetry, Selah, was published in 2017. VG Lee is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. In 2012, Lee was nominated for a Stonewall Award for writing. Her most recent novel, Mr Oliver’s Object of Desire was runner-up for the YLVA Publishing Literary Prize for Fiction 2017. Lee is also one of the judges for the prestigious Polari First Book Prize established in 2007. Her second collection, Oh You Pretty Thing will be published in February 2019. Jim MacSweeney came to the UK from Cork in 1982 to study drama. While living in London he came out as a gay man. After working for a number of years with Minority Rights Group he joined Gay's The Word in 1989 which he's managed for the last 22 years. Richard Scott's poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies including Poetry Review, Poetry London, Swimmers, The Poetry of Sex and Butt Magazine. His pamphlet Wound, published by Rialto, won the Michael Marks Poetry Award 2016. His debut collection Soho was published Faber & Faber in 2018 and is shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and Costa Poetry Prize. Andrew McMillan's debut award-winning collection, physical, was the first ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award and was shortlisted for numerous others including The Dylan Thomas Prize. His second collection, playtime, published in 2018, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for autumn 2018. He is senior lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at MMU and lives in Manchester. Gregory Woods is the author of Articulate Flesh: Male Homo-eroticism and Modern Poetry, A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition and Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World. His main poetry collections, of which An Ordinary Dog was the most recent, are published by Carcanet Press. He is Emeritus Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies at Nottingham Trent University.

Gay's the Word made history by becoming the first ever LGBT+ dedicated bookshop in the whole of the UK. Attitude Pride Awards 2018 is supported by United Airlines and Sky.

Bookshop gets topical