NEXT EVENT: Celebrating Gothic Women

Tuesday the 31^st of March, 2026, 6.30pm, Live and on Zoom 

An evening celebrating the dark imagination of women writers, with three brilliant voices in contemporary gothic fiction.

For our March Salon we're delighted to welcome back a good friend of the Salon Lyndsey Croal, with Angie Spoto, and Erin Hardee, for an evening of haunting fiction, dark imagination, and the enduring legacy of women in the gothic literary tradition.

Gothic Women – Voices of the Dark Imagination

March brings the first hints of spring… but at the Edinburgh Literary Salon we are turning instead to the shadows. This month we celebrate the rich and haunting tradition of gothic fiction written by women, marking the month of the International Women’s Day with an evening devoted to dark imagination, unsettling stories, and the enduring power of female voices in the genre. 

For this Salon, three brilliant writers of gothic and dark fiction will join us to discuss their work, read from their writing, and explore how women have shaped - and continue to reshape - the gothic tradition. Expect eerie atmospheres, uncanny characters, and plenty of inspiration for readers and writers alike. 

Lyndsey Croal is a Scottish author of strange and speculative fiction published in 100+ magazines and anthologies, including Apex, ElectricLit, Weird Tales, Best of British Science Fiction, and Mslexia’s Best Women’s Short Fiction. She’s a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awardee, Shirley Jackson Award and British Fantasy Award Finalist, and former Hawthornden Fellow. Her longer works include Limelight and Other Stories (Shortwave) and Dark Crescent (Luna Press).

Her latest novella In This City, Where it Rains, published with Luna Press, is a gothic horror set in an alternative cursed Edinburgh. Luna Press Publishing is an award-winning independent UK press, founded in 2015 by author and translator Francesca T. Barbini. They deal with Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Dark Fantasy, in both fiction and academia. 

Angie Spoto is an American fiction writer living in Edinburgh. In 2020, she completed a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. Her debut novel The Grief Nurse was shortlisted for the First Novel Prize and The Bridge Awards Emerging Writer Award. Her second novel The Bone Diver was longlisted for The Saltires: Scotland's National Book Awards, Fiction category. Angie loves stories that are dark and surreal, strange and magical, and is inspired by writers like Ursula Le Guinn, Octavia Butler, Leonora Carrington, and Naomi Novik. She loves fairy tales, especially Scottish ones. 

Erin Hardee is one half of the writing duo MK Hardy, along with her partner Morag Hannah. Their debut novel The Needfire came out with Solaris in July 2025, and was called “A consistently enjoyable mash-up of Gothic romance, Jamesian horror and Sapphic love story’’  by the Herald Scotland. Their next novel, The Haunting of Avis Lovelock, will be out in August 2026.

We will be at our usual home, The Outhouse, and tickets are free as always. If you can’t make it to the venue, just watch on zoom instead as we’ll livestream the presentation. Afterwards anyone is welcome to stick around and mingle until the pub closes!

How it works... 

6.30:                       Reception at the Outhouse

6.45:                       Open the Zoom meeting

7.00:                       Introduce Lyndsey and Angie

7.05                        Readings, Interview, Questions

7.40                        Notes of Interest

7.45                        Mingling, and further conversation  

Tickets are available from Eventbrite – please state which ticket type you require. We will send a zoom invitation to all attendees anyway.

All Salon Events are free. We invite a small donation (£3) for running costs, or encourage people to buy us a coffee to help fund our work, or buy our books. We look forward to seeing you in person or in the zoom-room!

Accessibility Notice:

Edinburgh Literary Salon is open to all those with an interest in all aspects of Literature, whether professional or personal, and to all parts of the industry: writers, publishers, booksellers etc. All are welcome, and events have free registration. While we aim to hold some events at accessible venues, our regular salon is in an upstairs room at The Outhouse. For this reason, we aim to livestream most events. If there is a problem accessing zoom, we will do what we can to assist. We strive to ensure adequate audibility, and straightforward registration. We invite positive feedback on how we can improve, even within our limitations as a non-funded organisation. We welcome open conversation.