OutStories Bristol

Beatrice Hitchman:  Negotiating with the Dead: Writing Lesbian Historical Fiction

The tribade, in search of one of her own kind, has a distinctive badge: this is the magnificent, curled, trimmed, sometimes beribboned poodle.

Photo copyright: Sarah Lee

But how reliable is the witness? How does a lesbian historical novelist go about writing a past that’s complicated by bias or plain old invisibility? This talk by Bristol lesbian author Beatrice Hitchman looks at the ethical detective work of researching a novel and what writers owe – or don’t owe – to communities of the dead.

The talk will be followed by OutStories Bristol’s AGM.

Saturday 14th November 2015.    2pm to 4pm.

The Function Room,     The Golden Guinea,     19 Guinea Street,    Bristol,    BS1 6SX.

Map

Please note: there are nine steps up to the front door, and 12 steps down to the basement function room.

The event is free and open to everyone, however a small donation to OutStories Bristol would be appreciated.

.

Beatrice Hitchman was born in London in 1980. She read English and French at Edinburgh University and then completed an MA in Comparative Literature. After a year living in Paris, she moved back to the UK, trained and worked as a documentary film editor, also writing and directing short films. In 2009 she graduated from the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA, winning the Greene & Heaton Prize for best novel-in-progress.

Petite Mort was published in March 2013 by Serpent’s Tail. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Authors’ Club First Novel Prize, has been shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Novel Prize, and adapted on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour as a ten-part serial starring Honor Blackman.

OutStories Bristol’s highly successful ‘Revealing Stories’ exhibition is to be displayed at Bath Spa University from 26th to 31st October 2015.

The exhibition is based on archival records and oral history interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people associated with Bristol and the surrounding area. Focusing on living memory (c. 1940s to the present) it tells how people fought to shape and control their own lives. It is the story of those who witnessed these changes and helped to make history.

Monday 26th to Saturday 31st  October 2015

‘Commons’ Building,  Newton Park Campus,
Bath Spa University,   Newton St Loe,   Bath,   BA2 9BN

The Commons Building is open 8am to 10pm daily to all – not just students! It is fully accessible.

Please note: this display comprises vertical text panels only; it doesn’t include any of the objects that were in the original exhibition at Bristol’s M Shed during February/March 2013.

Mapping LGBT+ Bristol is a collaboration between Bristol University’s Know Your Bristol project, Bristol City Council’s Know Your Place website, and OutStories Bristol. The aim is to create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT+ history of Bristol and the surrounding areas: Bath, South Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Somerset. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Activities will include:

• Gathering the stories of LGBT+ people through oral interviews.
• Research in the Bristol Record Office, libraries and other local archives.
• Collating and storing the digital material we collect and uploading it to websites.
• Creating a custom-made mobile app and a user-friendly interface embedded in OutStories’ own website.

Read more about the project here.

The project will kick off with a workshop on Saturday 26th September to:

Provided the funding application is successful, OutStories Bristol will commence a collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council in October. We are calling this project ‘Place‘ and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.

OutStories is already starting preparatory work – research in local archives, oral history interviewing, digitising material for upload to websites, etc.

We hold planning meetings to oversee the project, develop ideas and co-ordinate volunteer activities. Come along, meet a nice bunch of people, and get involved! We meet around a table in the pub and enjoy a drink too.

Next meeting:

Tuesday 11 August 2015,     7pm to 9pm

Venue to be announced

” […] I’ve had to survive a variety of things apart from sex work and transition — health issues and bad relationships, for instance, so I am temperamentally inclined to gallows humour and self-irony as general survival strategies. “

Roz Kaveney’s latest novel, Tiny Pieces of Skull, is based to a large extent on her own experiences as a young British trans woman living amongst trans sex workers in Chicago in the 1970s. As Heather Seggel’s Lambda Literary review explains, it is a highly entertaining and upbeat tale of what must, at times, have been an extremely scary and dangerous life.

Cheryl Morgan, who transitioned twenty years later but who knows Kaveney through the science fiction community, talked to Roz via email about her new book and how life for trans women has changed over the past four decades. Read the interview here.

Roz is giving a talk about her book at Hydra Books in Bristol.

Tuesday 7th July 2015.  6pm to 9pm

Hydra Books,  34 Old Market,  Bristol,  BS2 0EZ

Map
No step into the shop but unfortunately no accessible toilet

Roz Kaveney ‘Tiny Pieces of Skull’
Published by Team Angelica
www.teamangelica.com

Click here for a PDF flyer advertising the event.

Provided the funding application is successful, OutStories Bristol will commence a collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council in October. We are calling this project ‘Place‘ and it will create a permanent digital archive of the LGBT history of the Bristol area.

OutStories is already starting preparatory work – research in local archives, oral history interviewing, digitising material for upload to websites, etc.

We hold planning meetings on the second Tuesday each month to oversee the project, develop ideas and co-ordinate volunteer activities. Come along, meet a nice bunch of people, and get involved! We meet around a table in the pub and enjoy a drink too.

Next meeting:

Tuesday 14 April 2015,     7pm to 9pm

Old Market Tavern,     29-30 Old Market Street,     Old Market,     Bristol     BS2 0HB

Old Market Tavern                       Map and location

OutStories Bristol is developing a new collaborative project with the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council. Continuing the research we started for our Revealing Stories exhibition, the project aims to gather the LGBT story of the Bristol area and create a permanent online archive. We are calling this project place and it should formally commence in October (provided the funding application is successful).

Between now and October we are starting a number of mini-projects to establish small teams of  volunteers:

• Research locations in central Bristol with LGBT associations.
• Create a timeline of LGBT venues.
• Interview trans people; identify past and present local trans groups.
• Help Bristol’s LGBT groups collect and record their history.
• Any other local LGBT topic that interests you, and you want to research!

This event is your opportunity to learn about this exciting new project and find out how you can get involved – oral history interviewing, research in local archives or online, helping digitize material for upload to our website.

Refreshments provided. To help with numbers for catering, please book on Eventbrite.

Saturday 28 February 2015,  2pm to 4pm

Mild West Room,    5th floor,    Hamilton House,     80 Stokes Croft,     Bristol,     BS1 2QY

Map and getting there

Accessibility: the entrance on Stokes Croft to the left of The Canteen cafe/bar is ramped, no steps. There is a lift to the fifth floor.

The disabled toilets on the ground floor are unisex and may be used as gender-neutral toilets.

Print this flyer and invite your friends! :

***FULLY BOOKED***.  If you haven’t reserved a ticket and you turn up, we’re sorry to say you may be turned away.

Historian Josie McLellan tells the surprising story of gay activism in Cold War East Berlin. In the 1970s, a group of lesbians and gay men formed the HIB (Homosexual Interest Group Berlin), the first gay rights group in the Eastern Bloc. The HIB saw themselves as a ‘family’, supporting each other through difficult coming-outs, organising parties and balls for up to 200 people.

But they were also a highly political group, making interventions at public events and lobbying the East German authorities for official state recognition. Their links to Western gay activists were extensive – indeed a visit from Peter Tatchell was one of the key events in their early history.

How was all this possible under a dictatorial regime which was insistent that homosexuality should remain behind closed doors? Josie explains all, drawing on a series of interviews with members of the HIB, as well as their archives of photographs and film.

Dr. Josie McLellan is Reader in Modern European History at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of postwar Europe, with a particular interest in the way that economic and social change affects people’s everyday lives.

Free talk, but contributions to OutStories Bristol gladly received (suggested donation £3).

You can reserve your place on Eventbrite. You do not need to print the ticket as your registration is communicated electronically.

Friday 27 February 2015,   7pm

Upstairs at Roll for the Soul café,    2 Quay Street,    Bristol.     BS1 2JL  

Website and location

Full café-bar downstairs for refreshments.

Unfortunately we could not secure an accessible venue for this event;  it will take place up a flight of stairs and there is no lift. However, a sound recording of the talk will be taken and made available to anyone unable to participate. We are very sorry for this shortfall of standards in our programme of events.

LGBT Bristol have produced a programme of all LGBT History Month events in Bristol and Bath. Click here for a full list.