The Queer Girls’ Book Club is a community group where every member should always feel welcome, safe and valued. We encourage a healthy and passionate exchange of views in an environment of mutual respect. Please take some time to read our charter that highlights the expectations we have for our members to keep the club a friendly and welcoming space.
PLEASE RESPECT EACH OTHER
To ensure that everyone feels welcome, we ask that all members are respectful of each other’s pronouns, identities, abilities and experiences. No one will be pressured to speak or contribute if they are unwilling to do so. This is a book group but also a social space so we want you to connect with each other and make friends too!
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PLEASE SHARE YOUR VIEWS RESPECTFULLY & PRACTICE ACTIVE LISTENING
Some books can garner very strong opinions and that’s great! But please be mindful that you express yourself in away that is still respectful to each other and the author. Please try not to dominate the conversation. Whilst we hope that everyone will be enthusiastic about the book and have plenty to say, please avoid interrupting, conversing amongst yourselves or being dismissive of anyone else’s contributions. Our conversations have an organic format where attendees are free to chime in, but we do ask that you are mindful of each other so that everyone who wants to speak is able to do so.
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BE PREPARED FOR DISAGREEMENT
Please do share your opinions honestly but be conscious of the fact that others might disagree with you. The beautiful thing about literature is the vastly different ways a text can resonate with us and the interpretations we can have. Conflicting opinions are healthy and speak to our diversity of experience, but we never want anyone else’s interpretation to be disparaged.
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KEEP CONVERSATION RELEVANT
Since we only have an hour, let’s try to keep conversation relevant to the book (this one is honestly for me more than anyone else. I am the Tangent Queen). Our meetings do overrun on occasion if we're really into the flow but we do try not to divert from the text.
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BE OPEN TO BOOKS/ GENRES YOU MAY NOT BE AS FAMILIAR WITH
This is a group for the intellectually curious and the literary enthusiast. Ideally, we would love members to come to meetings every month to build a really solid community but we get it, some books are just more appealing than others. Even so, we warmly encourage you to try something new. The books that we vote on and read are meticulously curated and we endeavour to cover a mix of fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, novellas and short story collections, each covering a range of tones and written styles. You never know how a book can surprise you! That’s what this group is all about!
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RESPECT FOR THE VENUE
Our venue very generously hosts us for free so please be mindful that we are guests. We ask that the space is left exactly as you found it. We want to ensure that our community spaces remain clean, safe and gorgeous for the other occupants. For health and safety, please ensure that you have booked a FREE spot for each meeting on Eventbrite so that we have an idea of how many attendees to expect
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Repeated infringement of these expectations may lead to a verbal warning or being asked to leave the group
To date we have never had to do this and I would prefer to keep it that way
