Polari returns to Hastings.
Hosted by Paul Burston with Roxy Bourdillon, Joelle Taylor and Paul Taylor-Pitt.
Roxy Bourdillon is an award-winning writer and the editor-in-chief of DIVA, the world's leading magazine for LGBTQIA+ women and non-binary people. As a journalist she has interviewed everyone from A-listers Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and Keira Knightley to the legendary Rebel Dykes.
Her debut book ‘What A Girl Wants’ is shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2026.
Joelle Taylor is the author of four collections of poetry and one novel. Her collection ‘C+NTO & Othered Poems’ won the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize, and the 2022 Polari Book Prize for LGBTQ authors.
She is a co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live at the Southbank Centre and tours her work nationally and internationally.
Her new collection ‘Maryville’ was published by Bloomsbury in 2025. It was longlisted for the 2026 Forward Prize for Best Collection and is shortlisted for The Polari Prize 2026.
Paul Taylor-Pitt started out in the 1990s caring for people living with AIDS in a residential home. That sparked a thirty-year career helping people and organisations navigate deep change and transformation. He brings together psychology, coaching and storytelling to look at the big human questions of who we are, where we belong, and how we grow. His first book, ‘Still Here! Still Queer! Now What?’ was published in October and tackles what it's like to age in the LGBTQ+ Community.