Q is for Garden: In Conversation with Jenny Chamarette

As part of Queer History Club we invite you to join Jenny Chamarette in discussing their new title Q is for Garden!

Q is for Garden is a bold, tender exploration of how queerness and nature entwine - and what happens when we step beyond the binaries that fence us in.

When Jenny Chamarette faced a devastating health crisis, they found themselves unmoored from the rules of gender, sexuality and productivity. In a small South London garden, Jenny began to imagine another way of living: porous, unruly, rooted in the lessons of soil and plant life. Gardens, like identities, are usually bounded - but what if those limits can be re-drawn?

Blending memoir and cultural criticism, this book asks whether the categories we inherit - colonial, patriarchal, conventions of sexuality and gender - still serve us, or whether they confine us. From illness and recovery to queer love and ecological wonder, Q is for Garden invites readers to reimagine how we inhabit land, culture and each other. An eloquent work of nature writing and queer thought, Q is for Garden digs into the rich history of queer gardeners, botanists, artists and agriculturalists. It offers a hopeful vision of belonging, if we are curious enough to unearth it.

During the event Jenny will be in conversation with our very own Liza Bulgakova, followed by an open Q&A and, of course, book signing!

Jenny Chamarette is an author, educator, artist and curator based in London. An internationally recognised essayist and cultural critic, their writing has featured in Sight & Sound, been longlisted and shortlisted for the Nan Shepherd and Fitzcarraldo essay prizes and published in anthologies by Saraband and Elliott & Thompson. Their art writing has been commissioned by Unit and Grand Union galleries and appeared in outlets such as Another Gaze, LUX and Club des Femmes. Jenny is also Commissioning Co-Editor for the MAI Feminism and Visual Culture imprint of Punctum Books. When not writing they are usually in the garden or the allotment.

As well as being part of The Bookish Type team, Liza Bulgakova is an artist & co-director of The Grief Garden CIC - a community-led project that invites people who are experiencing grief to work together to co-create a garden as a place of acceptance, connection and healing. Liza has a deep interested in and passion for the reciprocal relationship between nature, creativity and wellbeing.

Date: Wednesday 23rd September 2026
Time: 7-9pm
Venue: The Bookish Type, 77a Great George Street, LS1 3BR