Raymond Carver | Literary Minimalism | Dirty Realism | The most disturbing of reads are those works that meticulously describe the human condition in a state of poverty.

Kirsty Logan - Literary Crush - A writer’s writer. By that I mean she inspires a creative vision which is expansive and borderless.

Carol Ann Duffy - Literary Crush - UK’s first female Poet Laureate. Open, engaged, and fearless defender of poetry, social justice and equality.

Rita Mae Brown author of Rubyfruit Jungle tells the story of the feisty, resolute and unapologetic lesbian heroine Molly Bolt.

Literary Crush - With every page I turned, Virginia Woolf the celebrity gave way to Virginia Woolf the writer.

I remember buying my first DIVA magazine in 1994, the year DIVA was first published. I remember thinking a whole magazine for lesbians, WOW.

Ali Smith, Literary Magician - her stories resonate way beyond the actual page and I am left with my imagination working overtime.

W H Auden showed me the power of personification as a tool for description - the art of bringing alive the inanimate elements of a scene.

Maurice was one of the first gay books I read. And at 17, with no language to express my longing, to find the words that spoke of it meant everything to me

Elizabeth Bishop - Reaching for the Moon, a biopic of her life in Brazil with lover Maria Carlota Costallat de Macedo Soares (Lota)

Silver Moon Bookshop - Pioneering women of feminist and lesbian publishing. Pandora Award Winners.

Annie On My Mind - A narrative of teenage gay love with a positive message, and a happy ending to treasure by author Nancy Garden