The Joys of Edinburgh Deaf Festival

Edinburgh Deaf Festival is an annual celebration of deaf culture, language and heritage and its vibrant, varied program is open to all! It's running until this Sunday 18th, so if you haven't got along, check out their events HERE.

This year we joined their fabulous Sign Between The Lines event to celebrate deaf women in literature with a book stall celebrating deaf characters, lives and experiences.

Their speakers were Lucy Rogers, a deaf illustrator specialising in children’s books and Aliya Gulamani, a Commissioning Editor for the publishing company, Unbound, and it was hosted by the lovely Tomas Gerrard from Deaf Action, who runs a regular BSL bookclub. It was such an infectiously joyful and curious event - and a reminder of how few deaf writers make it into print. We'd love more deaf stories, more novels with deaf characters, more histories of deaf culture - if you have any favourites, please do let us know!

In the meantime, here are some we love, some we had on our stall and a few you've recommended to us. We've lead with books we know are written by deaf women and then cast the net a little wider.