VIRTUAL: Feeling good is freedom: the radical potential of romance writing

Too often sidelined, we wanted to give romance its own spotlight and time on the stage, because as a genre it shows us that the personal is political. Our speakers Lex Croucher, Adiba Jaigirdar and Lola Keeley discuss the radical potential of romance writing with chair Anahit Behrooz.

This page sells the virtual tickets - for in-person tickets please visit this page.

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About the speakers:

Lex Croucher grew up in Surrey reading a lot of books and making friends with strangers on the internet. With a background in social media for NGOs, Lex now writes historical-ish rom coms for adults (REPUTATION, INFAMOUS) and historical fantasy rom coms for teenagers. Gwen and Art are NOT in Love is their YA debut.

Adiba Jaigirdar is the award-winning, critically-acclaimed and bestselling author of The Henna Wars, Hani & Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating, and A Million to One. A Bangladeshi/Irish writer and former teacher, she has an MA in Postcolonial Studies from the University of Kent, England and a BA in English and History from UCD, Ireland. She is the winner of the YA book prize 2022, the KPMG Children's Books Ireland Awards 2021, and was a finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary awards. All of her writing is aided by tea, and a healthy dose of Janelle Monáe and Hayley Kiyoko. When not writing, she is probably ranting about the ills of colonialism, playing video games, or expanding her overflowing lipstick collection.

Lola Keeley is a writer and coder. After moving to London to pursue her love of theatre, she later wound up living every five-year-old’s dream of being a train driver on the London Underground. She has since emerged, blinking into the sunlight, to find herself writing books and now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her wife and four cats.

Anahit Behrooz is a writer, editor, and critic based in Edinburgh. She works as Books Editor and Events Editor at The Skinny and writes for AnOther Magazine and Girls on Tops among others. Her book BFFs: The Radical Potential of Female Friendship was published by 404 Ink in 2023.

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First Date is a collaboration between Lighthouse Bookshop - Edinburgh's radical bookshop - and the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

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

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.

At Scotland’s inaugural romance festival FIRST DATE, we'll be serving up a dazzling variety of romance books, have events discussing genre boundaries, subversive politics, queer joy, and feminist pleasure, and an all-day marketplace to find your next (or maybe your first?) romance read.