First Date is back for 2025!

Save the Date dear reader: from 17-31 May YOU are once again invited to join us for another edition of our First Date romance festival!

As great lovers of romance and feel good fiction - and following a fortuitous conversation with Jenny Colgan in 2022 - we thought it was high time we created a platform for a much beloved genre that deserves its own stage, and so we give you FIRST DATE!

For the third year of FIRST DATE, we’ve teamed up with the Book Lovers Bookshop to bring you TWO WEEKS of events, including writing workshops, panel discussions, late night shopping and lots more! FIRST DATE serves up a dazzling variety of romance books, events discussing genre boundaries, subversive politics, queer joy and feminist pleasure.

‘Pleasure is the point. Feeling good is not frivolous, it is freedom’ - adrienne maree brown

I know we said it last year, but it deserves to be said again: Romance writing has long shown that the personal is definitely political. The genre has hosted important conversations on consent, and represents a huge diversity of stories which are still missing from mainstream fiction - joy and pleasure for women, queer people, people of colour, fat people, disabled people, and more. Too often it’s seen as a frivolous genre - but our pleasure is not frivolous! Our pleasure is radical.

Events will take place at Lighthouse Bookshop, Book Lovers Bookshop, Lady and the Bear café, and other venues to be announced, showing you lots of facets of the genre we love. All Lighthouse events (with the exception of writing workshops) will be livestreamed to the Lighthouse website & YouTube for anyone who wants to join in from afar. You can browse the events, reserve your tickets, and pre-order books below!

FULL PROGRAMME!

Lighthouse events have a 🔆 emoji and Book Lovers Bookshop events have a 💕 emoji

🔆 Sunday 18th May: 4:00-5:30 PM - Embodying Love: A Poetry and Flash Fiction Workshop facilitated by Jj Fadaka (venue: Lighthouse Bookshop) - book here or scroll down to see the event

💕 Sunday 18th May: 7:00-8:30 PM - F1 Romance online event with Simone Soltani, author of Ride with Me and Cross the Line (Book Lovers Bookshop) book here

💕 🔆 Tuesday 20th May: 5:30-6:30 PM - Join us for afternoon tea to celebrate Lindz McLeod's new book The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet (venue: Lighthouse Bookshop garden) book here

🔆 Thursday 22nd May: 7:00-8:00 PM - Pleasure is the Antidote to Shame - a feminist non-fiction event with Beth Ashley, author of Sluts, and Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin, author of Roses for Hedone (venue: Lighthouse Bookshop) book here or scroll down to see the event

💕 Saturday 24th May: 4:30-6:00 PM - Bookshop signing with Emma Lucy, author of Live, Ranch, Love (venue: Book Lovers Bookshop) book here

💕 Monday 26th May: 6:30-9:00 PM - Scottish romantasy with Hazel McBride, author of A Fate Forged in Fire (venue: Lady and the Bear café) book here

🔆 Tuesday 27th May: 7:00-8:00 PM - Epic loves in myth and folklore, with Jean Menzies, author of The Lady of the Lake, and R.M. Brown, author of Song of the Stag (venue: Lighthouse Bookshop) book here or scroll down to see the event

💕 Thursday 29th May: 4:00-5:00 PM - Instagram live event with Aamna Qureshi, author of The Baby Dragon Café and A Witch's Guide to Love and Poison (venue: @bookloversbookshop Instagram) no ticket needed, information is here

💕 🔆 Thursday 29th May: 6:00-9:00 PM - Late night romance book market, browse special offers and find your next romance read! (venue: Lighthouse Bookshop, Book Lovers Bookshop) the Lighthouse market is ticketed, you can book here or scroll down to see the event

🔆 Friday 30th May: 7:00-8:00 PM - The best in new and contemporary romance, with Sareeta Domingo, author of Possibility, and Eleanor Pilcher, author of That's What She Said (venue: Lighthouse Bookshop) book here or scroll down to see the event

💕 Saturday 31st May: 6:30-9:00 PM - Dive into the world of Quicksilver with author Callie Hart (venue: Edinburgh Community Church) book here