Bent Lit LGBTQ+ Literary Festival 2026

Bent Lit is Asheville's annual LGBTQ+ literary festival — a unique event in the American South that gathers queer writers, poets, and readers for a programme of readings, panels, book signings, and conversations. The festival reflects Asheville's particular status as both an arts colony and an LGBTQ+ destination: the combination of the city's creative community, its strong independent bookshop culture, and its position as the most culturally active city in the Southern Appalachians provides the natural conditions for a literary festival that has no equivalent in the region. Bent Lit draws nationally recognised queer authors alongside emerging local and regional voices, and its setting in Asheville — a city that has been welcoming to LGBTQ+ people for decades — gives the event a relaxed confidence that more tentative literary gatherings in less sympathetic contexts cannot replicate.