Throughout history, lesbian communities have built worlds within worlds — networks of care, creativity, resistance, and radical love. When mainstream society excluded or erased them, lesbians turned toward each other, creating chosen families that nurtured survival and joy.
In Every Era, is an evening of conversation exploring the historical roots of lesbian chosen families — from underground networks of solidarity to intergenerational mentorship, from bars and bookshops to bedrooms and barricades.
Hosted by writer and audio producer Elizabeth Lovatt, this panel brings together a powerful line-up of writers and thinkers — C.L. Clark, Fiona Keating, and Sharan Dhaliwal— to reflect on how lesbian networks have always been sites of resistance, resilience, and imagination.
Featuring
C.L. Clark is a BFA award-winning editor and Ignyte award-winning author of several books, including The Unbroken (Magic of the Lost trilogy), Fate’s Bane (a novella), and Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf (an Arcane novel). She graduated from Indiana University’s creative writing MFA and was a 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow. She’s been a personal trainer, an English teacher, and an editor, and is some combination thereof as she travels the world. When she’s not writing or working, she’s learning languages, reading about war and [post-]colonial history, or trying not to throw her kettlebells through the wall. Her work has appeared in various SFF venues, including Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Tor.com, Uncanny, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
Sharan (she/her) is a writer, editor and journalist - she founded Burnt Roti magazine and Middlesex Pride, and her interests are in queer history. Her debut book Burning My Roti came out in 2022.
Fiona Keating is a journalist and editor, covering world news, travel and current affairs as well as history and archaeology. She has worked for ITN, IBTimes, SKY, the Independent, and the Guardian. She was born in Penang, Malaysia, is from Chinese/Irish heritage and has lived in London since she was two years old. She completed the Crime Writing MA at City University and lives in Greenwich with her partner. Smoke and Silk is her first novel.