Queer Fiction Reading Group

Welcome to our Queer Fiction Reading Group!

This is an inclusive reading group open to anyone to come together to read and discuss LGBTQIA+ literature, with titles handpicked by Sanna. Through a queer lens we’ll explore everything from overlooked queer classics to groundbreaking works of contemporary literary fiction.

To welcome spring we are reading Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar - a landmark novel of the gay experience. Published in 1948, this daring third novel shocked the American public, which has just begun to hail Vidal as their newest and brightest young writer. It remains not only an authentic and profoundly important social document but also a serious exploration of the nature of idealistic love.

Jim Willard, former high-school athlete and clean-cut boy-next-door, is haunted by the memory of a romantic adolescent encounter with his friend Bob Ford. As Jim pursues his first love, in awe of the very same masculinity he possesses himself, his progress through the secret gay world of 1940's America unveils surreptitious Hollywood affairs, the hidden life of the military in the Second World War and the underworld bar culture of New York City.