A Morning with Damian Barr and Curtis Garner

Damian Barr’s latest novel The Two Roberts is a love letter to Robert MacBryde and Robert Colquhoun, gay pioneers who met on their first day at Glasgow School of Art in 1933. Barr has imagined the lives – and loves – they were forced to hide, in stark contrast to Curtis Garner’s powerful debut Isaac, which interrogates masculinity and queerness in the digital age. Join Damian and Curtis as they discuss the differing experiences of queer desire and intimacy, love and sex, a century apart.

Damian Barr is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and journalist. His memoir Maggie & Me, won Stonewall Writer of the Year and Sunday Times Memoir of the Year. His debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, was shortlisted for six major awards and named a Book of the Year in the Observer, Guardian and Mail. He has written columns for The Times and Sunday Times and hosted Front Row on BBC Radio 4 as well as his own series Guide Books. In 2019, Damian brought books back to television with the Big Scottish Book Club, now in its sixth series and syndicated internationally. Also on BBC TV, he presented Shelf Isolation and the landmark documentary for Sir Walter Scott’s 250th. Damian holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His world-famous Literary Salon ran from 2008 to 2023, celebrating writers from around the world and widening the cultural conversation. He is a trustee of Gladstone’s Library and a campaigner for libraries. He lives in Brighton.

Curtis Garner was born in Cornwall in 1996. When he was eighteen, he moved to London to study Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Greenwich. He graduated in 2017 and has been working in publishing since. In 2020, he also received an MA with Distinction from the Manchester Writing School, where much of Isaac was written. In his spare time, he reviews novels on Instagram (@queer_novels). He lives in Hackney.

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