VIRTUAL: This is romance: transcending genre boundaries

Romance is expansive: and maybe it isn’t what you expect it to be. Our three authors showcase some of the breadth of romance as a genre, with literary fiction, graphic novel erotica, and a book about what you love about yourself. Our speakers K Patrick, Tab Kimpton and Radhika Sanghani discuss the genre boundaries of romance with chair Lynsey Rogers.

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

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About the speakers

K Patrick is a writer based in Scotland. Their poetry has appeared in The Poetry Review and Five Dials and was shortlisted for The White Review Poetry Prize in 2021. In 2020 they were runner-up in the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship. They were named an Observer Best Debut Novelist of 2023 for Mrs S.

Radhika Sanghani is a writer for the Telegraph, writing news, features and profiles about women and women’s issues. She has an MA in Newspaper Journalism from City University London, a BA in English Literature from University College London, and was runner-up in GQ’s Norman Mailer writing competition.

Queer shapeshifter & comic artist Tab Kimpton attempts to fill in the gaps in the LGBT acronym, especially for erotica. As well as his webcomics Minority Monsters, Sir Butler & Boy and Infernal Relations, he's the co-editor and producer of a series of Llambda and PRISM award-nominated body positive trans and queer centric anthologies.

Lynsey Rogers is a writer, project manager, script reader and event chair based in Edinburgh. Her theatre work has been staged by Live Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company’s Open Stages and Offbeat Festival. A strong advocate for accessibility in the industry, Lynsey has worked as an accredited Audio Describer for organisations including National Theatre of Scotland and the Edinburgh International Festival.

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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.