These Book Festivals Will Send You Soaring With The Latest Inspiring Page Turners
by Heather Cassell
I love fall and winter. The seasons give me the perfect excuse to curl up under a blanket in front of the fireplace with my latest read cracked open in front of me and a hot chocolate next to me. I get lost in the pages whether I’m turning or swiping the page or listening to the stories plucked from my bookshelf or tapped in my audio library.
The best way to learn about the latest books writers are working on and to meet your favorite authors is at book festivals. The first queer book festival, Outwrite, started in San Francisco in 1989, two years after Lambda Literary launched its first queer book report, Lambda Book Report. The festival moved to Boston in 1991 where it ran for a decade until 1999.
Outwrite planted a seed. Queer readers and writers weren’t about to go without gathering. After a few years, new queer book festivals sprouted in 2003 with Saints & Sinners and 2004 the Golden Crown Literary Society, a queer women’s book festival, in the United States. In more recent years, book festivals have diversified, such as the Lambda LitFest, which focused on Black queer writers launched in 2017. The festival took a Covid hiatus in 2020, but it is anticipated to return in 2025.
Queer book festivals are growing around the world. Festivals have been launched in India and the United Kingdom.
The festivals attract thousands of queer lovers of the written word.
These are the 10 queer book festivals worth traveling for your next great read and to get queer fan girl crazy over your favorite wordsmith:
Rainbow Lit Fest, New Delhi, India
Dates: December 9 & 10
Time: 10:30 a.m.-9:45 p.m.
Location: Gulmohar Club, Block C, Gulmohar Park, New Delhi, Delhi 110049, India
Tickets: $3 (INS250)
This year’s Rainbow Lit Fest features a pantheon of authors, thought leaders, artists, and activists more than 60 speakers (23 who are queer and transgender women) and performers from across India and will award its first-ever Rainbow Awards for Literature & Journalism. Featured speakers include gay lawyer and senior advocate at the Delhi High Court Saurabh Kirpal, trans-activist, doctor, and educationist Dr. Aqsa Shaikh, legendary author and poet Hoshang Merchant, and critically acclaimed poet Akhil Katyal. The festival also features international award-winning film director and writer Alankrita Shrivastava, Agents of Ishq writer and founder Paromita Vohra, Gaysi Family Editor Sakshi Juneja, and London-based storyteller and intimacy columnist Seema Anand. The festival also highlights a new generation of queer writers, activists, and influencers Rhode scholar and writer Anish Gawande, lawyer Rohin Bhatt, Official Humans of Queer Founder Yash Sharma, filmmaker Priyakanta Laishram, and activist Zayan. The festival was founded in 2019 to celebrate LGBTQ and ally authors and other art forms, such as dance, films, music, and the exchange of ideas, especially around LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, the caste system, and more. The two-day book festival has featured more than 130 authors, poets, artists, activists, filmmakers, musicians, politicians, scholars, scriptwriters, students, teachers, and more, and an estimated 1,300 attendees throughout the weekend in Delhi, India. Attendees have come from India and as far as the United States.
ReadOut Festival, Gulfport, Florida, United States
Dates: February 16-18, 2024
Location: Artists of Elements: The Gathering Place, 4746 22nd Avenue, South, St. Petersburg, Florida 33711
Tickets: $10 for the festival, Tret Fure concert tickets are $20.
This year, the ReadOut Literary Festival features keynote speaker award-winning writer Lynn Ames, author of the biography about Dot Wilkinson, the greatest catcher ever to play women’s softball, “Out at the Plate: The Dot Wilkinson Story.” Ames will also be in conversation with former school library media specialist and Kissimmmee co-owner Erin Decker about the recent wave of book bans, “Book Banning: What Can I Do?” among other events featuring about 50 iconic and emerging authors at the hybrid (in real life and virtual) book festival in February. Lesbian singer and song writer Tret Fure will also close out the festival with a live performance be performing in Gulfport on Saturday, February 17 night.
Now in its seventh year, last year the festival attracted 150 people in-person and more than 500 online participants in 2022. Susan Gore, board president of the LGBTQ Resource Center at the Gulfport Public Library, anticipates attendance will be larger this year due to the Shriner’s Children’s Hospital Clearwater Invitational Softball Tournament being held the same weekend as the literary festival.
“A posse of women already is planning to converge on both for a mix of literary fun and eye-candy games!” wrote Susan Gore, board president of the LGBTQ Resource Center at the Gulfport Public Library, in an email to Girls That Roam.
Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Date: March 22-24, 2024
Time: To Be Announced
Location: Hotel Monteleone, 214 Royal St, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130
Tickets: $200 (full registration), $175 (discounted registration now through Jan 1, 2024)
The 2024 Saints & Sinners LGBTQ Literary Festival features 33 writers, including queer sci-fi “No Shelter but the Stars” and “Consecrated Ground” author Virginia Black, “Close Calls with Nonsense” essayist Stephanie Burt, “Scorched Grace” author Margot Douaihy, award-winning “Barnburner” poet Erin Hoover, and “Desert Haven” author Penelope Starr, among others.
Stephanie’s collection of essays, “Close Calls with Nonsense,” garnered the poet, literary critic, and professor a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Margot’s “Scorched Grace” was one of the most anticipated and buzzed about novels in queer literary circles of 2023.
The 3-day festival in New Orleans’s famed French Quarter features panel discussions and master classes around literary topics, provides a forum for authors, editors, and publishers to talk about their work to inspire emerging writers and for the enjoyment of fans of LGBTQ literature.
Founded in 2003, Saints & Sinners is one of the country’s oldest and longest running queer book festivals.
Rainbow Book Fair, New York City, New York, United States
Date: April 20, 2024
Time: 12-6 p.m.
Location: The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York, New York 10011
Tickets: Free (suggested donation $3)
The largest and one of the oldest queer book festivals in the United States, the 14th annual Rainbow Book Fair, happens in the heart of the American book publishing center. The fair attracts an estimated 1,500 people along with hundreds of writers, publishers, book vendors, and media people from all over the US. Founded in 2009 the festival features author readings, panel discussions, and publisher exhibitors. Featured authors and panel discussions for the 2024 book fair will be announced next month. Check the fair’s website or follow the fair on Facebook or Instagram for more information about the 2024 fair.
Golden Crown Literary Society, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, United States
Date: July 10-14, 2024
Time: 1 p.m. on
Location: To Be Announced
Tickets: $400 (early bird tickets, expires January 15, 2024), $450 (general admission)
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Golden Crown Literary Society, a “sapphic and women-loving-women literature” conference featured a keynote speaker Lynn Ames, author of “Out at the Plate: The Dot Wilkinson Story,” and about 65 author readings and the society’s Writing Academy students reading from their first books in 2023. Founded to increase the visibility of queer women’s literature in 2004, the festival attracts more than 300 attendees this year. Conference organizers anticipate to attract upwards of 350 attendees – including locals by offering day passes – in 2024. The conference features keynote speakers, panel discussions addressing writing and publishing issues, and writing workshops.
The conference is “a great opportunity for connection across the sapphic literature community: writers, aspiring authors, readers, editors, publishers, audiobook narrators, and others come together to network, learn, and have fun,” wrote conference board president Betsy Carswell in an email to Girls That Roam.
Speakers, panelists, and workshops for the 2024 festival are not available to be announced. The conference’s Goldie Awards ceremony is livestreamed and the keynote speaker is recorded and posted on the festival’s YouTube channel. For more information, visit the conference’s website, sign up for its newsletter, or follow the festival on Facebook or Instagram.
OutWrite DC, Washington, DC, United States
Date: August 2024
Time: To Be Determined
Location: Virtual
Tickets: Free
The capital’s LGBTQ book festival, OutWrite DC, themed, “Levity,” featured more than 55 LGBTQ authors, poets, novelists, and playwrights reading and discussing upward of 20 works, as well as curated panels and workshops in 2023. Topics addressed in writers’ works at the festival included queerness in crime fiction, writing about and living with AIDS and the history of LGBTQ bars, reported the Washington Blade. Author readings and panel discussions are available on the DC LGBTQ Community Center’s YouTube Channel.
The DC festival was launched in 2011. According to Public Seminar, OutWrite was originally a queer writer’s conference launched by OUT/LOOK magazine (1988-1992) in San Francisco in 1990. Two years later, it moved to Boston before the last conference at the time in 1999. In 2011, DC revived the festival at The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center.
Pride on the Page Book Festival, Palm Springs, California, United States
Date: October 2024
Time: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
Location: Palm Springs Cultural Center and the historic Camelot Theatre, 2300 E Baristo Rd, Palm Springs, California 92262
Tickets: Mixture of free and paid events up to $65 per person
Pride on the Page Book Festival’s third year in 2024 is set to be another blockbuster event following a successful second year featuring keynote speaker “Tales of the City” author Armistead Maupin and more than 40 authors and 11 panel discussions the 2023 festival was a memoirists readers delight. Many of the panels focused on authors, such as “When the World Didn’t End: A Memoir” author Guinivere Turner, “Knocking Myself Up: A Memoir of My (In)Fertility” author Michelle Tea, and “L.A. Interchanges: A Brown & Queer Archival Memoir” author Lydia Otero, “Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World” author Christian Cooper, and “A Tale of Two Omars: A Memoir of Family, Revolution, and Coming Out During the Arab Spring” author Omar Sharif, Jr., telling their own stories from memoirs to screens.
Check Pride on the Page’s website or follow the Palm Springs Public Library Foundation’s Eventbrite page for updates for the 2024 festival.
The Coast is Queer, Brighton, East Sussex, United Kingdom
Date: October 2024
Time: To Be Determined
Location: Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Sussex, Gardner Centre Road, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RA, United Kingdom
Tickets: $70 (festival pass)
The Coast is Queer, LGBTQ book festival is the first of its kind for queer readers, writers, and allies to celebrate the written word since 2019. In its three editions, the festival has featured nearly 70 of the UK’s best queer authors in the East Sussex resort town.
The festival is produced by New Writing South, an organization supporting writers living and working in South-East England along with partners Marlborough Productions, Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Sussex, University of Brighton, and Creative Future.
Bay Area Book Festival’s Queer Bedtime Stories, Berkeley, California, United States
Date: June 1-2, 2024 and a special Young Adult Festival May 4, 2024
Time: To Be Announced
Location: Berkeley, California/Family Day at the Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge Street, Berkeley, California 94704
Tickets: $15
Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Bay Area Book Festival is one of America’s premiere book festivals featuring 15 stages hosting upward of 300 authors. The festival celebrates the San Francisco Bay Area’s rich literary history and innovation brimming with writers, readers, activists, and independent booksellers. The festival attracts upward of 10,000 book lovers, authors, and publishers and features hundreds of exhibitors.
One of the festival’s signature events is the queer author reading, Queer Bedtime Stories, features readings of original works up to 10 minute long from LGBTQ poets, memoirists, historians, scriptwriters, and writers during the festival. To watch select past festival events, visit the festivals YouTube channel or listen to its podcast featuring interviews with authors throughout the year and its special, WomenLit, program focused on women writers.
Follow Scott Sessions on Eventbrite for updates about Queer Bedtime Stories. For updates about the Bay Area Book Festival, follow the festival’s Facebook or Instagram pages.
LitQuake, San Francisco, California, United States
Date: October 2024
Time: To Be Announced
Location: Various venues throughout San Francisco
Tickets: To Be Announced
A literary institution birthed at the Edinburgh Castle Pub in 1999, LitQuake, has established itself as one of the premiere book festivals in the US. Needless to say, being in the queer mecca, the festival that takes over the City by the Bay has always been welcoming of LGBTQ authors and readers. It features several queer author readings and panel discussions annually. To watch some panel discussions, check out LitQuake’s YouTube channel. Follow LitQuake on Facebook and Instagram to receive festival announcements and more.
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