Tell us what you’re doing at The Coast is Queer this year

I’ll be in conversation with rising star, Curtis Garner, author of Isaac and his queer Cornish follow-up, Orange, so I’ll be feeling very much the wise old dear. His novels are ultra contemporary where my last three have been set in the 70s, the 50s and early twentieth century, so I expect we’ll be talking about what has changed in queer lives and which challenges seem eternal.

Why is The Coast is Queer an important festival?

It’s fabulous to have a festival where queer voices are the cake, not just the pretty icing. LGBTIQ – or lesbigatique culture, as I prefer to call it – contains a brilliant paintbox of stories and opinions so it’s important to give them space to shine and celebrate their differences.

What is the queer book that inspired you as a writer?

The Puffin Book of Princesses was my earliest bible on everything from style and beauty to using irony to mask your pain and advice on how to overcome your mother or get your man.

What is the book you would add to the queer bookshelf for future readers?

Am I allowed two? I’d like to see the books of queer geniuses Sylvia Townsend Warner and Denton Welch given the wider notice they deserve rather hearing people continue to bang on about their far less subversive contemporary, Virginia Woolf. Neither wrote a dud so just search for them by name and thank me later.

Patrick Gale will be in conversation with Curtis Garner on Sunday, 18 October at 1:15PM. Join them for a frank intergenerational conversation centred around their latest books, Love Lane and Orange – two richly emotional novels that trace the shifting terrain of queer love between men across different generations.