🎙️ What’s This Episode About?
Dan Roberts is a Liverpool librarian and the founder of the Proud Readers Book Club, an LGBTQ+ reading group that meets monthly in the Hornby Reading Room at Liverpool Central Library. In less than a year it has grown from a nerve-wracking first night where Dan wasn’t sure anyone would show up, to a thriving community of 25 to 30 members and a shortlisting for a national Libraries Connected Award.
Filmed in the stunning Oak Room at Central Library, Dan joins John to talk about how the book club came to be, why it quickly became about much more than books, and what it means to create a space where queer people can show up as themselves without performing for anyone. They get into the reading list, from Oscar Wilde to contemporary queer fiction, and why being pushed outside your comfort zone is half the point.
The conversation also covers the bigger picture of what Dan is building: partnerships with Homotopia Festival, the LGBT Foundation, and upcoming outreach workshops across Liverpool and Manchester. The Proud Readers Book Club is quietly becoming a serious force for queer culture and community in the city.
There’s also a very honest and very funny thread running through it all about the pressure queer people feel to be performative, why Dan’s ideal weekend involves Miss Marple and two dogs, and why he is absolutely, unapologetically a Golden Girl at heart.
It’s warm, funny, and quietly inspiring, a conversation about the power of creating something from nothing and watching it become exactly what your community needed.
🗣️ Why Listen?
If you’re seeking genuine conversations that reflect the diverse experiences within the LGBTQ+ community, Proudly Said offers a platform for those narratives.
📣 Connect with Us – ProudlySaid.co.uk
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