The Stories We Bring

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

What do we really see when we look at each other and at ourselves? What narratives and assumed truths do we bring into any meeting with others, about beauty, relationships, agency and the society that shapes us all?

Who better to lead us into a weekend of exploring the personal and political than three generous, bold thinkers and authors whose work untangles what it means to see ourselves? Join Sumaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Matt Colquhoun and Nathalie Olah as they plunge the mirrors we all hold up to each other.

The panel will be chaired by Noor Hemani.

Our Speakers

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is a poet and writer whose work confronts assumptions about history, race, violence and knowledge. She is the author of Seeing for Ourselves; and even stranger possibilities; Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia and the poetry collection Postcolonial Banter; a co-author of A FLY Girl’s Guide to University; and a contributor to the anthologies Cut from the Same Cloth? and I Refuse to Condemn. Her writing has also featured in The Guardian and Al Jazeera, and her poetry has been viewed millions of times online. She is a co-founder of the Nejma Collective, a group of Muslims working in solidarity with people in prison. Suhaiymah is based in Leeds and is currently writing for theatre.

Matt Colquhoun is a writer and photographer from Hull, UK. Best known for writing about the work of Mark Fisher, their most recent book, Narcissus in Bloom, was published by Repeater Books in 2023. Currently a PhD candidate in Philosophy at Newcastle University, they blog at xenogothic.com.

Nathalie Olah is a journalist and cultural critic whose writing is published by the New Statesman, Guardian, TLS, Five Dials, Jacobin and Tribune. She holds a BA in English Literature from Oxford and an MA in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Sussex. In 2015, she moved to the Netherlands to work for a research organisation adjacent to the Dutch government. She credits witnessing the humiliation of the Greek people by EU bureaucrats, along with the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis in Britain, as shaping her politics and the disillusionment with neoliberal economics.

*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.