Polari Edinburgh

Polari literary salon returns to Edinburgh for an evening of LGBTQ+ story telling and conversation.

Hosted by Paul Burston with former Polari Prize winner Fiona Mozley, former prize nominee Chitra Ramaswamy and 2026 prize nominee Alessandra

Thom.

PAUL BURSTON is the author of six novels and four non-fiction books and the editor of two short story collections.

His memoir ‘We Can Be Heroes’ is published by Little A and has been described by Russell T. Davies as “brutally honest” and by Bernardine Evaristo as “a compelling, hugely enjoyable memoir about a fearless life lived to the full.”

In 2016, he featured in the British Council’s Global List of ‘33 visionary people promoting freedom, equality and LGBT rights around the world.’

In 2026 he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

FIONA MOZLEY is the author of three novels, 'Elmet', ‘Hot Stew’ and 'Awake Awake'. She is the winner of a Somerset Maugham Award and the Polari Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Ondaatje Prize and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. She was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Women’s Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Edinburgh.

CHITRA RAMASWAMY is a writer, journalist, and critic. ‘Homelands’ (Canongate), a book about her friendship with a German Jewish refugee called Henry Wuga, won the Saltire Non-Fiction Book of the Year and was included in The Guardian’s top memoirs and biographies of 2022. Her first book, ‘Expecting: The Inner Life of Pregnancy’ (Saraband) won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for the Polari Prize, and was reissued in spring 2024. She has contributed essays to a number of collections and judged literary prizes including the Baillie Gifford prize for Non-Fiction, the Gordon Burn Prize, and the Desmond Elliot.

Her latest book, a collection of micro-essays called ‘Rich Things for the Alasdair Gray Archive’, was published in spring 2026.

ALESSANDRA THOM is a writer from Aberdeenshire based in Edinburgh. Her debut novel, ‘Summer Hours’, was longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2026. She was shortlisted for The List Rising Scottish Author Award 2025, was a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award Winner for Prose in 2023 and won second place in the Short Fiction International Short Story Prize 2024. They have written for BBC Studios and The Skinny and their short stories have appeared in Gutter and Short Fiction.

Part of the Polari Prize 15th Birthday Showcase, funded by Arts Council England