New Intimacies

Please check ticket info for this event below, incl. information about access.

For many of us, our understanding of closeness is inseparable from the heteronormativity, individualism and nuclear families prescribed by dominant cultures, whether we reject these or not. Intimacy, however, can encompass so much more, from care in community to endless kinds of kinship.

In this event, three authors who have all spent countless hours stretching the meaning of intimacy and care, invite us to stretch along with them, to discover what relationships and ways of being with each other lie beyond those we learned to accept.

Our Speakers

Hannah Silva is a writer and performer working in sound poetry, radio, and experimental non-fiction. Her debut poetry collection Forms of Protest was Highly Commended in the Forward Prizes. She has an MFA in Theatre Practice and a PhD on poetry in performance from Stirling University. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career fellow at Queen Mary University, London. Her play for BBC Radio 4 'An Artificially Intelligent Guide to Love' starred Fiona Shaw and was the starting point for My Child, the Algorithm. She lives in London with her child.

Sophie Chauhan is a London-based writer and researcher, born in the UK and raised in Naarm (Melbourne). She is completing a PhD in Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies at University College London. Her academic, creative and organising work converge around her interest in anti-capitalist, queer and decolonial approaches to radical coalition-building. Curious Affinities, which explores the political functions of intimacy through poetry and prose, is her first book.

Lynne Segal is an Australian-born, British-based scholar, writer, and activist, who has been publishing and editing books for many decades in the area of gender, sexuality, feminism, ageing, and care. She taught in higher education for fifty years, after arriving in London in 1970. All her writing reflects her left feminist milieu, arguing for a more peaceful, compassionate and egalitarian world. Her books include Is the Future Female? Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism, Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men, and Straight Sex: The Politics of Pleasure. As part of the Care Collective, she co-authored The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence.

This panel will be chaired by Anahit Behrooz

*Please note that masks will be required at this event (as with all Lighthouse events).

*Accessibility: All events will be professionally filmed & livestreamed. The Roxy is wheelchair accessible (including toilets) and we'll have provisions for neurodivergent guests including stims, quiet space and colour-coded lanyards.

*Events are £5 or free -we completely understand paying for one or two events and then getting free spots for others. The Radical Book Fair is entirely bookshop run and ticket sales are vital to keeping the fair sustainable and paying all our speakers so all support is heartily welcome!

*Featured books: The book & ticket option will select the most recently published book at any given event, if you’re not sure which book you want or don’t want that featured book, then buy a £5 voucher ticket that can be used for any of the books below.

*If you'd like to help make the book fair accessible to more folks, please consider adding to our pay-it-forward fund HERE.