From the team at LGBT+ Lit Fest (formerly Leeds LGBT+ Literature Festival and Leeds LGBT+ Book Club)
TL;DR
We are rebranding! As we have grown over the last few years, we’ve realised it’s time to update our name to LGBT+ Lit Fest, given we’re now working internationally. Events-wise, we’re still the same Lit Fest and Book Club, but we will be streamlining our socials into one account per platform and updating our governance.
How Far We've Come
We started in 2017 as a volunteer run Book Club in Leeds Central Library. The following year we held our first literature festival with the help of Leeds Libraries. Since then, the Lit Fest has expanded – we now have volunteers from across the UK and around the world. This has allowed us to create events which tailor to a wider audience, inviting contributors internationally and have been delighted to collaborate with people from places such as Canada, India, New Zealand, the USA and Ireland, as well as throughout the UK.
We feel this provides a platform for a variety of LGBTQIA+ voices, from those you may not have heard of – yet – to those we all know and love. This is also key to allowing us to learn from people’s experiences, which may be different backgrounds to our own.
What Have We Decided?
As part of this, we feel the Lit Fest works with a wider demographic and audience. In recognition of this, we have chosen to remove the word ‘Leeds’ from our name. Also, we found our previous branding of ‘Leeds LGBT+ Literature Festival’ and ‘Leeds LGBT+ Book Club’ a bit of a mouthful to say! This has provided us with an opportunity to rebrand and we are now known as LGBT+ Lit Fest.
So what’s staying the same?
We will continue to run a monthly virtual Book Club (which you can find details of here).
We will also continue to run Lit Fest events.
We will retain our closed Facebook group for Book Club and other LGBTQIA+ book and literature discussions.
And What’s changing?
Our name and our logo.
Now, LGBT+ Lit Fest runs the Book Club and our other events.
We are also streamlining our social media into one account per platform.
We are in the process of updating our governance as an organisation.