All About Love: Kate Young and Liv Little in conversation with Lotte Jeffs

Celebrating the publication of Experienced by Kate Young and Rosewater by Liv Little (paperback edition) this will truly be an evening about all different kinds of love – romantic, friendship, familial, parental, self, and more. Author and journalist Lotte Jeffs, whose books include This Love and The Queer Parent, will host the conversation in the intimate space of Gay's The Word bookshop.

Grab your ticket while you can, and we'll see you there on the night!

Experienced by Kate Young

Bette loves Mei, but Bette and Mei are on a break, so Bette can catch-up on the decade of dating experiences she missed before she came out.

So Bette is (reluctantly) on a dating odyssey: a quest to have lots of casual sex with lots of hot women and come back to Mei more experienced and more certain about what she wants. And now she has new friend Ruth as her queer dating guide, she can't possibly fail. It's just three months, then she'll be back with Mei.

It's the perfect plan … isn't it?

Rosewater by Liv Little

Elsie is a sexy, funny, and fiercely independent woman living in South London. But, at just 28, she is also tired. Though she spends her days writing tender poetry in her journal, her nights are spent working long hours for minimum wage at a neighbourhood gay bar.

The difficulty of being estranged from her family, struggle of being continually rejected from jobs, and fear of never making money doing what she loves, is too great. But Elsie is determined to keep the faith, for a little longer at least. Things will surely turn around.

They have to. As she tries to breathe through the panic attacks, sleeping with her hot and spirited co-worker Bea isn't exactly straightforward and offers Elsie just another place to hide. As Elsie tries to reconnect with her best friend Juliet, her fragile world spirals out of control.

Can Elsie steady herself and not fall through the cracks?

This Love by Lotte Jeffs

When Mae and Ari meet their final year at the University of Leeds, their connection is magnetic. Mae, whilst stubborn and no stranger to breaking hearts, needs Ari's bright light to guide her out of her self-centred ways; Ari, vibrant, charming and reeling in the aftermath of a scandal in New York, clings to Mae as his grounding anchor.

As the years sweep by, the two traverse the tumult of life: toxic partners and hidden secrets, the heavy weight of grief, and a complicated, unignorable desire to start a family . . . If they can hold onto one another in the face of the relentless past and the inevitable future, they might discover how to build something beautiful out of their expansive, boundary-breaking love.

Spanning ten years of extraordinary friendship, This Love is a vivid and epic tale of finding your soulmates, building an unconventional family, and the limitless, ever-changing forms love can take.

Event Notes:

All tickets include a drink upon arrival, including alcoholic and non-alcoholic options.

If you are unable to attend, please place your ticket for resale so that others can snap them up.

To order/reserve the books for collection, follow the links above to Gay's The Word's website. 

Kate, Liv, and Lotte will be available after the event to sign copies of their books. 

Kate Young

Kate is a writer and cook whose award-winning Little Library Cookbooks feature food inspired by beloved works of literature. After a sunny Australian childhood, spent indoors reading books, she moved to London, which suited her much better. She now lives in a converted factory in the English countryside. Her debut novel EXPERIENCED is a queer romcom set in Bristol.

Liv Little

Liv is a writer of Jamaican and Guyanese descent via South London. Liv tells stories with heart about the people and places that matter to her. Her work spans journalism, audio, TV and curatorial projects for which she’s received various accolades, including LGBTQI+ Broadcaster of The Year and Rising Star at Wow. Her short story, ‘The Sisters’, was published in the critically acclaimed HAG, a collection of forgotten folktales retold. She was a BBC Writer in Residence for 2021, in which she developed an original pilot for a queer conspiracy thriller. At 21, Liv founded the award-winning media company gal-dem. Liv is most at peace in nature, and she now lives by the sea. ROSEWATER is her debut novel.

Lotte Jeffs

Lotte has spent her career writing columns, profiles and think pieces for the British press. She has worked as an editor for ELLE and ES Magazine, and is the author of HOW TO BE A GENTLEWOMAN: The Art of Soft Power in Hard Times, co-author of THE QUEER PARENT and the children’s picture book MY MAGIC FAMILY. She co-hosts the podcast From Gay To Ze, about LGBTQ parenting and pop culture. Lotte has won the PPA Writer of The Year Award and The Great British Podcast Award. THIS LOVE is her debut novel.