Naked Boys Reading: Vanity

Naked Boys Reading is the perfect intimate live event: a themed literary salon featuring in-the-buff readings. Naked Boys Reading’s fabulous host Dr Sharon Husbands will be leading the audience through the night and make sure that no page is left unturned and no piece of skin stays covered. Musical entertainment is provided by resident DJ The Duchess of Pork.

Vanity and its consequences has been fertile territory of many of the greatest queer writers – André Gide, Oscar Wilde, Jean Genet, Gore Vidal and of course, Tennessee ‘Tom’ Williams, to name just a few. Ironically, the literary self-portraits they produced reveal as much about their own vanity as it does the topic itself. This association of vanity with gay men – Simon Fanshawe once spoke wearily of their ‘preening vanity’ – has a long literary history, a consequence perhaps of our refusal to grow up, or like Wilde’s Dorian Gray, grow old.

Naked Boys Reading: Vanity promises an orgy of self-love, our own vainglorious contribution to the age of over-exposure, celebrating Pride - and of course our favourite sin: VANITY!

Readers: Alex Craddock, Alfie Ordinary, Ian Shepard, Ian Street

Curated by Dr Paul Ryan