Paul Burston

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Paul Burston is a Welsh writer and journalist. He was born in York, England, and grew up in South Wales. He studied English, drama and film at university. Early in his career he worked with LGBT groups GALOP and ACT UP and then moved into journalism. He edited the LGBT section of Time Out for several years and helped found Attitude magazine.

Burston has written for The Guardian, The Independent, The Times and The Sunday Times. His first novel, Shameless (2001), was praised by The New York Times and shortlisted for the State of Britain Award. His third novel, Lovers & Losers (2007), was shortlisted for a Stonewall Award.

In 2007 he started Polari, an LGBT literary salon in Soho that later moved to the Southbank Centre, and in 2011 he founded The Polari Book Prize for LGBTQ+ writing, now based at the British Library.

In 2016 he was named in the British Council’s Five Films 4 Freedom list. His novel The Black Path (2016) was longlisted for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize. By 2018 he had published five novels and two short story collections. That year it was announced his sixth novel, The Closer I Get, would be published by Orenda Books as part of a two-book deal; it appeared in 2019 and drew on his experience of online harassment.

In December 2021 it was announced his memoir We Can Be Heroes would be published by Amazon’s Little A in June 2023. He also contributed to Riot Act, a 2018 verbatim theatre work based on interviews with Burston and others.