Join us at City of Sanctuary for this very special in conversation event with writers Ellen Jones and Elizabeth Lovatt, following the publication this year of their wildly popular and incredibly important books, Outrage: Why The Fight For LGBTQ+ Equality Is Not Yet Won, And What We Can Do About It, and Thank You For Calling The Lesbian Line: A Hidden History of Queer Women.
Ellen Jones is an award-winning author, strategist & campaigner who works with world's foremost organizations and brands to instigate and sustain transformative shifts towards inclusion, particularly for LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent communities. Ellen's impactful campaigning & advocacy work over the last decade has garnered prestigious accolades, including the MTV EMA Generation Change Award and the esteemed title of Stonewall's Young Campaigner of the Year. She was also named one of London's most influential people by Evening Standard and as one of Attitude Magazine's '101 LGBTQ Trailblazers’. Her first book, Outrage: Why the Fight for LGBTQ+ Equality Is Not Won, and What You Can Do About It was published in 2025, which explores the practical actions people can take to support the LGBTQ+ community.
Elizabeth Lovatt is a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction, originally from Leicester and now living in London. She has been published by Popshot Magazine, Spread the Word, 404 Ink and Cipher Press, among others. In 2020, she was accepted onto Penguin Books' #WriteNow mentorship scheme for underrepresented writers to develop the manuscript of what is now her first book: Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line.
Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line is a timely and vital exploration of how lesbian identity continues to remake and redefine itself in the 21st century and where it might lead us in the future. With warmth and humour, Elizabeth Lovatt reimagines the women who both called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990s while also tracing her own journey from accidentally coming out to disastrous dates to finding her chosen family. With callers and agents alike dealing with first crushes and breakups, sex and marriage, loneliness and illness (or simply the need to know the name of a gay bar on a night out), this is a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women.