Against The Odds

What happens when you discover you are queer in an environment where it is outlawed, shamed, silenced, even punishable by death? Some circumstances turn growing up LGBTQ+ and building an authentic life into a struggle against tremendous odds. And yet wherever these challenges exist, queer lives, loves and communities find a way against a backdrop of all sorts of seemingly impossible legal, cultural and social restrictions. 

Join Musih Tedji Xaviere (these letters end in tears), Majid Parsa (The Ayatollah’s Gaze: A Memoir of the Forbidden and the Fabulous) and Avi Ben-Zeev (Calling My Deadname Home: The Trans Bear Diaries) for this powerful conversation on how queer love and self-expression can persevere and create joy in the most challenging circumstances chaired by activist, facilitator and community organiser, Dr Nat Arias. 

3-Day Festival and Saturday Pass holders: This event is free to attend with your pass, but advance registration is required as places are limited. Please book a Pass Holder Free Registration ticket to reserve your place. Without a reservation, we cannot guarantee entry.

Musih Tedji Xaviere is a Cameroonian fiction writer whose work explores love, alternative ways of seeing, and the human condition. Her debut novel, These Letters End in Tears, won the 2021 Pontas & JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize and was nominated for the 2025 British Book Awards. She is represented by the Pontas Literary and Film Agency.

Majid Parsa (pseudonym) comes from a mixed Iranian–Turkish background and lived in Iran for twenty-nine years. He started writing in 2018. His debut, The Ayatollah’s Gaze, is his eye-opening life story of growing up as a gay man in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Majid now lives in the UK where he is a practicing doctor, living with his partner and two cats.

Avi Ben-Zeev (he/him) is a London-based gay trans man, high school failure, and Yale PhD. As a writer, psychologist, and immigrant, he explores the challenges and freedoms of journeying toward belonging and home. Avi’s stories won the 2024 London Independent Story Prize (LISP) and the UK’s first transgender writing competition. He was shortlisted and highly commended by the 2023 Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, and his co-edited anthology, Trans Homo, was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Avi’s literary memoir, Calling My Deadname Home, was published by Muswell Press and longlisted for the 2025 Polari Literary Prize.

Dr Nat Arias (chair) (they/them/theirs) is a Black queer and trans-masc Dominican activist/researcher, facilitator and community organiser. Their work is rooted in anti-colonial collaborations with other queer and trans activists of colour in Europe to explore abolitionism, preserving queer of colour activist histories in Europe, and Black climate justice. Nat facilitates in-person and online training and community workshops, using creative discussions to strengthen research and advocacy skills and learn about local queer of colour activism and everyday abolition and Black Climate Justice in the UK.