Gay Icons: The History of LGBTQ+ Fashion

Peg Alexander is a Leeds based award winning broadcaster, presenter, and journalist across TV, radio, podcasts and events. A colourful, warm, optimistic northerner, she’s all about the world we live in and life in general – people, politics, the planet, and cake. She‘s a regular on shows including Jeremy Vine on 5 and previously Steph’s Packed Lunch, and is often heard on national radio putting her twopenneth in.

Broadcasting is her 2nd career. Before moving into the media she was a charity CEO and was senior in public policy. She was also founding Director of Bradford’s UNESCO status as the world’s first City of Film. She now combines both careers.

She’s written 2 books – one on how to keep weight off long term and is currently finishing a travel-inspired memoir.

Joelle Taylor is the author of 4 collections of poetry and a novel. Her most recent collection C+NTO & Othered Poems won the 2021 T.S Eliot Prize and was the subject of a Radio 4 arts documentary, Butch. C+NTO is currently being adapted for theatre with a view to touring. A former UK SLAM Champion she founded the national youth poetry slams SLAMbassadors through the Poetry Society in 2001, remaining its Artistic Director until 2018. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and the 2022 Saboteur Spoken Word Artist of the Year.

Eleanor Medhurst is an independent fashion historian and the author of Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion (2024), as well as the online blog Dressing Dykes. She studied design and fashion history at the University of Brighton, and has worked towards the sharing of queer histories through her involvement with Queer Looks and Queer the Pier exhibitions at Brighton Museum. She lives in Birmingham with her wife.

Paul Burston is curator and host of award-winning LGBTQ+ literary salon Polari and founder of the Polari Prize book awards for LGBTQ+ writers, based at the British Library. In 2016, he featured in the British Council’s Global List of ’33 visionary people promoting freedom, equality and LGBT rights around the world’. Paul Burston is the author of six novels and five non-fiction books and the editor of two short-story collections. His memoir We Can Be Heroes: A Survivor’s Story (published by Little A) is a tale of living through two pandemics, surviving two near death experiences and battling his own demons.