To celebrate LGBTQIA+ history month, we have something incredibly special for you. Publisher D-M Withers will be talking to us about an important, and until now largely unknown queer novelist, Mariana Villa-Gilbert (1937-2023), and her finest novel, A Jingle Jangle Song.
Fabulous indie publisher Lurid Editions are bringing out a new edition of A Jingle Jangle Song in 2026 and are very excited to re-introduce readers today to this lost lesbian novel of the late 1960s – quirky, sweet, eccentric and filled with the sounds and energies of the era’s counterculture, from a forgotten queer author who deserves to be remembered.
DM Withers will be in conversation with local author and creative writing lecturer Clare Fisher to discuss Villa-Gilbert’s life and work, queer book and publishing history; they will reflect on why access to the literary past is vital for queer readers, alongside the wider recovery work of Lurid Editions, publish rediscovered LGBTQIA+ books from the twentieth century archive.
About A Jingle Jangle Song
“You get fed up singing jingle jangle songs and doing gigs around the country. There’s no time to wonder, no time to lie in the grass and dream. One loses so much: one just isn’t a real person any more.”
Late 60s London, folk singer Sarah Kumar arrives to give a concert. She is hot stuff and a hot mess – androgynous, awkward and alluring.
Kumar attends hip parties, sings to her fans and passes out wasted. She is a picture of consummate coolness, hid nervously behind huge sunglasses – a subversive imagining of a strong queer female lead amid the commercial folk boom.
Inside the countercultural throng, Kumar’s life is soon derailed by an encounter with an older woman, the intoxicating Mrs. Stankovich.
Buried in the archives for far too long, A Jingle-Jangle Song is the lost queer novel of the late 1960s. Eccentric and atmospheric, sweet and satirical, the novel celebrates how queer desire erupts in unexpected – and unignorable – ways.
Event description by organisers.
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- LGBTQ+ History Month in Sheffield
