Friendship is full of revolutionary potential in the face of a profoundly anti-social capitalist system. Friends in Common explores friendship as a radical practice, capable of upending hierarchies and producing social change.

Friendship can transcend social boundaries and political borders. It is vital in building communities and underpinning solidarity. But its transformative potency ensures that it is heavily policed and restrained by the state. Understanding the radical possibilities of friendship can help us rethink our approach to family, work and politics, and show us new routes to resistance and ways to open up spaces of solidarity and escape.

We’ll be joined by the authors Laura C. Forster and Joel White who will tell us more about the book and why they wrote it. We’ll have an interactive session for us all to join in with and then finish with a Q&A panel of guests from local organisations. 

You’ll be able to buy a signed copy of the book on the night but if you’d like to buy in advance you can get it here. Email sarahautumn@gmail.com for the 40% discount code. 

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Author Bios 

Laura C. Forster

Laura C. Forster is a lecturer in Modern History at the University of York. She is a member of the History Workshop collective and the author of The Paris Commune in Britain: radicals, refugees, and revolutionaries after 1871 (Oxford University Press, 2025) and Friends in Common: radical friendship and everyday solidarities (Pluto Press, 2025).

Joel White 

Joel White is a writer and researcher based in Glasgow. He is involved with groups in the city that organise around mutual aid, migrant solidarity, prison abolition and anti-racism. His writing has appeared in Guardian, Wire, Tribune and the LRB blog. He co-runs the record label GLARC.

Panel Guests 

Rahel Fitsum - Little London Voices

I don’t want to see anyone struggling. I know what suffering feels like because I have suffered a lot myself. That is why I created and support a WhatsApp group with over 200 people, to share help, information, and support.

I help people because I care. Sometimes I support people face-to-face, sometimes I refer them to the right services, and sometimes I interpret for them because I speak two languages.

This is my promise:

I will continue to help people with honesty, kindness, and respect. My goal is to support families and communities.

We’re still confirming a couple more guests and will add their bios here as soon as confirmed. We’ll also be having a guest poet on the night. 

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Guest Poet - Suhayal 

Suhayl is a Bradford based published poet who will share a few poems on solidarity and friendship during the event. 

“I truly feel poetry can change the world. It has inspired me, it’s unearthed a lot of ideas within me and a lot of change within me. What I really want to come from it is to change people’s lives, change peoples’ perspectives, hopefully get them into poetry and get them loving poems, relating to them.”

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Kirsty Heald - Bi+ Leeds Social Group and Angels of Freedom

'Community and connection is everything! It is thedifference between people being able to thrive or just survive and more thanever must be cherished and protected. The work I do to bring that to theLGBTQIA+ community wherever possible is a privilege and an honour and somethingthat is eternally needed - perhaps now more than ever.'

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tickets!