Telling Our Own Stories

This event will have a BSL interpreter 

We are delighted to be kicking the 2024 festival in style with DIVA Magazine editor Roxy Bourdillon,  Lesbians Talk Issues researcher Nazmia Jamal, and Matthew Todd – the editor who famously got Prince William on the cover of Attitude magazine – in conversation with journalist, historian and activist Paula Akpan, discussing how things got better when we started telling our stories ourselves. 

The Chicago Tribune, L’Echo de Paris, the Sydney Evening News, El Heraldo de Madrid, the Westminster Gazette  – newspapers around the world reported Oscar Wilde’s criminal trials in 1895 … wicked, perverted, unspeakable, more odious than even that of murder. 

99 years later, the first edition of DIVA Magazine advertised Lesbian Leather Shorts (films, not hotpants!), listed 46 lesbian venues in London (five in Brighton) and told us “you can’t please all the perverts all the time”. Scarlet Press published seven Lesbians Talk Issues pamphlets including Lesbians Talk Violent Relationships, (Safer) Sex and Detonating the Nuclear Family. Neil Tennant came out to Attitude magazine. And a century on, Gay Times’ October issue celebrated Oscar Wilde with Neil Bartlett’s new Picture of Dorian Gray featured on the cover. How far we have come!

Join us to celebrate the history of queer magazines in print and imagine where the industry might take us in the future.

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Roxy Bourdillon is an award-winning writer and the editor-in-chief of DIVA, the world’s leading magazine for LGBTQIA women and non-binary people. As a journalist, she’s interviewed everyone from Keira Knightley and Miriam Margolyes to the legendary Rebel Dykes, and has written for numerous publications, including Cosmopolitan, the Guardian, Woman&Home, Attitude and Curve. A connoisseur of all things queer, Roxy has spoken about hidden sapphic history in the Gateways Grind documentary presented by Sandi Toksvig, given a talk about The L Word at the British Film Institute and hosted a special show celebrating lesbian nightlife on Virgin Radio. Her groundbreaking work has earned her a place on both the Pride Power List, published in The Guardian, and The Attitude 101: LGBTQ+ Trailblazers Changing The World. Roxy’s debut book, What A Girl Wants: A (True) Story Of Sexuality And Self-Discovery is out in April 2025.

Matthew Todd is a multi-award-winning writer and a former editor of the UK’s best-selling gay magazine, Attitude, where he interviewed Madonna, Lady Gaga and Daniel Radcliffe amongst many others. Prince William’s sat for the cover of Matthew’s last issue and made the Royal Family’s first statement against homo, bi and transphobic bullying.

Matthew’s book, Straight Jacket, the first British book about LGBT mental health, was voted Best LGBT Book Of The Year by Boyz readers and has been described as ‘utterly brilliant’ by Owen Jones in The Guardian, as ‘life saving’ and ‘game changing’ by readers, and as ‘an essential read for every gay person on the planet’ by Sir Elton John. His second book ‘Pride: The Story of the LGBTQ Equality movement’ was published in 2019 and called ‘a book to make you feel proud’ by Russell T Davies.

He has written for most British newspapers and appeared regularly on television and is the winner of 3 British Society of Magazine Editors Awards, a Stonewall Journalist of the Year award and Boyz Best LGBT Book of the Year. He was given the Freedom of the City of London for services to the LGBT community.

Nazmia Jamal is currently doing post-graduate research on the Lesbians Talk Issues pamphlets (1992-1996). As part of her project’ Lesbians Talk Issues Revisited’ she arranged for the series to be digitised and made available to all readers via the Bishopsgate Institute’s online archives. Over the years she has been an archetypal lesbian English teacher, queer film festival programmer, feminist project instigator, feral curator, community archivist and bookclub host (RIP Lez Read Cardiff). IG @houseoflabrys @lesbians_talk_issues

Paula Akpan is a journalist, historian and public speaker. A sociology graduate from the University of Nottingham, her work mainly focuses on blackness, queerness, social politics and our relationship with technology. She regularly writes for a variety of publications including Vogue, Teen Vogue, The Independent, Stylist, VICE, i-D, Bustle, Time Out London and more. Paula has also interviewed the likes of Oprah, Lupita Nyong’o, Reese Witherspoon, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Syd, Ray BLK and more. Her articles can be found here.

Graduating with a distinction in her Masters in Black British History, Paula has an interest in mapping out the lives and activism of Black lesbians and queer women in Britain between the 70s and 90s. She is currently writing her first book, When We Ruled (2024), tracing the lives and legacies of 12 African queens and warriors who contributed to the shaping of the continent.