Join us as we celebrate the publication of Niven Govinden’s latest novel, DIARY OF A FILM. Niven will be joined in conversation with Rosie Dastgir via Instagram Live.

An auteur, together with his lead actors, is at a prestigious European festival to premiere his latest film.

Alone one morning at a backstreet café, he strikes up a conversation with a local woman who takes him on a walk to uncover the city’s secrets, historic and personal. As the walk unwinds, a story of love and tragedy emerges, and he begins to see the chance meeting as fate. He is entranced, wholly clear in his mind: her story must surely form the basis for his next film.

This is a novel about cinema, flâneurs, and queer love – it is about the sometimes troubled, sometimes ecstatic creative process, and the toll it takes on its makers.

But it is also a novel about stories, and the ongoing question of who has the right to tell them.

Niven Govinden is the author of five previous novels, most recently THIS BRUTAL HOUSE, which was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize and shortlisted for the Polari and Gordon Burn prizes.

Rosie Dastgir is a writer and novelist, born in England to a Pakistani father and an
English mother. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in the Weekend Financial Times,
New York Times Magazine, Stella, Planet Mindful, Prospect, and she has written and
presented for BBC Radio 4. Her novel, A SMALL FORTUNE, is published by Riverhead
(USA), Quercus (UK), and Editions Bourgois (France). She lives in Dalston, London.

Join us when we welcome Torrey Peters for a virtual event to discuss her new novel, DETRANSITION, BABY, with Shon Faye. The discussion will be held via Instagram Live.

Reese nearly had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York, a job she didn’t hate. She’d scraped together a life previous generations of trans women could only dream of; the only thing missing was a child. Then everything fell apart and three years on Reese is still in self-destruct mode, avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.

When her ex calls to ask if she wants to be a mother, Reese finds herself intrigued. After being attacked in the street, Amy de-transitioned to become Ames, changed jobs and, thinking he was infertile, started an affair with his boss Katrina. Now Katrina’s pregnant.

Could the three of them form an unconventional family – and raise the baby together?

Torrey Peters lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth. She is the author of two novellas, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker.

Shon Faye is a writer and editor who has written for The Guardian, The Independent, Vogue, Dazed and others. Her first book The Transgender Issue: an argument for justice will be published in September 2021.