In Conversation: Izabella Scott & Elizabeth Lovatt

Head to The Waves at 6.30 pm or a free evening with two acclaimed writers digging into hidden queer histories.

Izabella Scott’s The Bed Trick unpicks one of the strangest cases to reach a UK courtroom. Two former best friends face each other at a sex offence trial: one says she was tricked into queer sex by a friend posing as her boyfriend, while the other, Gayle Newland, insists they were secret lovers and the boyfriend was a shared fiction.

The case gripped the nation across two trials in 2015 and 2017, ending in Newland’s conviction for the rare and controversial crime of “rape by deception.” Scott uses it to explore just how malleable a courtroom story can be and the many myths buried deep in the law itself.

Elizabeth Lovatt’s Thank You For Calling the Lesbian Line reimagines the women who called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990s, weaving in her own journey from an accidental coming-out to finding her chosen family. It’s a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women, and a timely look at how lesbian identity keeps redefining itself today.

Together they make for a truly fascinating and thoughtful evening.