This panel discusses the potential of libraries as spaces for generating and nurturing queer communities as well as the limits of certain institutional forms of librarianship. Our panelists comprise workers in university and public libraries as well as creators of queer community libraries.

The panel includes Dr Alice Corble (University of Sussex), Melissa Rakshana Steiner (Birkbeck, University of London), Leila Kassir (Senate House Library, University of London), Ciaran Clark (University of Sussex), Colette Townend (Lambeth Libraries), Saradha Soobrayen (Creative Activist)

Alice Corble (Chair) joined University of Sussex Library in September 2019 as Academic Services Supervisor, where she delivers learning, teaching and research support. She has been active in developing resources for minority groups and a range of LGBT, Black History, anti-racist and decolonising initiatives for the Sussex community. Alice completed her Sociology PhD on the cultural politics of public libraries in a time of crisis at Goldsmiths in January 2019. She has over ten years’ experience working in a variety of roles across academic, public, community and radical libraries – a journey that commenced with a radical librarianship traineeship at The Feminist Library in 2010. Along the way she has found libraries to be spaces that foster fertile meetings of queer minds.

Melissa Rakshana Steiner (she/her) is a Librarian in the Disability and Dyslexia Support team at Birkbeck, University of London. Originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand where she co-ran a queer/feminist space called Cherry Bomb Comics, she has been involved in queer & DIY activities in London for over a decade.

Leila Kassir (she/her) is the Academic Librarian for British, US, Latin American & Caribbean Literature at Senate House Library, where she co-curated the 2018 'Queer Between the Covers' exhibition and events season. She is also nearing the end of an MA by Research project about the representation of Lyons Corner Houses & teashops in novels and archives. As a result of a longstanding interest in small press and zine publications, in 2009 she founded the London College of Communication Library Zine Collection.

Ciaran Clark is the Library Admin Supervisor at University of Sussex Library. He coordinates the library’s social media and has assisted with the online presence for almost two years, creating a new social strategy which includes setting up and training social media champions across the Library. He has also shifted the tone to one that further embraces queerness and anti-racism, celebrates disability and promotes mental health. His background is in public and special libraries where he was instrumental in relaunching Outhouse Library - the only queer library in Dublin - and setting up an LGBTQ staff network in South Dublin. His vision of libraries is they are radical, politized, celebratory spaces where queers can congregate, transform, subvert, and form community.

Colette Townend has worked as a librarian at Lambeth Libraries in London since 2013, she has helped plan this month’s Lambeth LGBTQ+ History Month programme. Prior to Lambeth she has worked in Merton, Enfield and Croydon Libraries. She graduated from CityLIS in 2020, writing on LGBTQ+ issues in public libraries (available on Humanities Commons). She is co-organising the Recording It Ourselves conference on DIY cultures, information, archives and histories which takes place 20 March 2021.Twitter: @Colette_lis

Saradha Soobrayen is a creative activist working with poetry, visual arts and live arts. Born in London of Mauritian parentage, she received an Eric Gregory Award in 2004 and was named in the Guardian as one of the 'twelve to watch', up and coming new generation of poets. She represented Mauritius at the Southbank Centre’s Parnassus Poetry Festival and won the Pacuare Reserve’s Poet Laureate residency in 2015. She was the poetry editor for Chroma: A Queer Literary Journal and has worked at the National Poetry Library. Saradha is a passionate advocate for LGBTQI+ rights, for the preservation of libraries and for indigenous heritage. Saradha’s experimental short fiction and poetry are published in journals and anthologies and ‘Sounds Like Root Shock’ a multidisciplinary poetic inquiry into the depopulation of the Chagos Archipelago is a lifelong project.