Polari Live Online

Two weeks before this year’s Polari Prize winners are announced at The British Library, Polari goes live online with shortlisted authors Nicola Dinan, Viola Di Grado and Paul Stephenson.

Viola Di Grado is a London-based Italian author with works published in fifteen countries. With her first novel “70% Acrylic 30% Wool” she became the youngest winner of Italy’s prestigious Premio Campiello Opera Prima. She is also a contributor for various newspapers, including The Guardian, and a literary translator: among others, she has translated works by Patricia Highsmith and Joyce Carol Oates. Her novel Blue Hunger is shortlisted for The Polari Prize.

Nicola Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. Bellies, her debut, was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize, shortlisted for the Mo Siewcharran Prize, the Polari First Book Prize and the Diverse Book Awards, and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Disappoint Me, will be published in 2025.

Paul Stephenson’s collection ‘Hard Drive’ was published by Carcanet in June 2023. It was shortlisted for the Gay Poetry category of the Lambda Literary award in the US and is currently shortlisted for the Polari Book Prize. He has three previous pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015); The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), written after the November 2015 terrorist attacks, and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017).

Hosted by prize founder and chair of the judges, Paul Burston.

Part of the Polari Prize National Showcase, funded by Arts Council England.