Dr Jean Menzies

in Conversation With Lavender Menace

2pm - 3pm

Join the brilliant Dr Jean Menzies as she discusses her non-fiction and fiction work with the legendary Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive.

Dr Jean Menzies is an award winning author, ancient historian, and presenter from Scotland. She currently writes nonfiction for all ages and fiction for adults. Her nonfiction titles range an examination of LGBTQ+ retellings of Greek Mythology (All the Violet Tiaras: Queering the Greek Myths), to an entertaining history of women’s sex lives in antiquity (Aphrodisia: Women, Sex and Pleasure in the Classical World). Meanwhile, her debut novel was published by Penguin Michael Joseph in 2025 and is a sapphic reimagining of the Medieval Arthurian Romances from the perspective of The Lady of the Lake. When not working on future projects, Jean can be found talking all things books, history and mythology @jeansthoughts everywhere online.

Lavender Menace opened in August 1982 as Scotland’s first lesbian and gay bookshop in Forth Street, Edinburgh. Set up by Sigrid Nielsen and Bob Orr, the shop grew out of several years of LGBT+ bookselling in the city which started with Open Gaze bookstall in 1976 as part of the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group’s (SHRG) Gay Information Centre in Broughton Street. Today, Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive is a Community Interest Company established to promote and benefit the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, queer, intersex, asexual (LGBTQIA+) community and their allies. Lavender Menace Queer Books Archive works to create and maintain a free and welcoming community archive space for reading, research, and socialising.