Bluebird acquires 'wild ride' through LGBTQ+ culture from The Queer Parent authors

Bluebird is to publish “a wild ride through everything queer” from Stu Oakley and Lotte Jeffs, authors of The Queer Parent.

World rights to Do Ask, Do Tell: LGBTQ+ Life, Love and Culture Laid Bare were acquired by Jodie Lancet-Grant, associate publisher at Bluebird, from Abigail Bergstrom at Bergstrom Studio. Do Ask, Do Tell will be published 29th May 2025. 

Seeking to broaden what they describe as their own “siloed” view of what it means to be queer, the authors interviewed a range of LGBTQ+ people, from club night promoters and sauna owners, to residents at the UK’s only retirement home for queer people, asking questions about everything from aging to drag, racism, body dysmorphia, disability and hedonism.

Oakley said: “The beauty of being queer is that there is no one size fits all. But this also means we are potentially limited by our own experiences which perhaps don’t take into account the rich tapestry of LGBTQ+ life. The whole point of the book is to hold up our hands and say ‘we don’t understand, tell us’ which we hope will also reassure our non-queer readers. It’s okay to not know and to want to learn, and we hope people will come on that journey with us.”

Jeffs said: “The magic for us when writing our first book was that we broadened our understanding to learn about families outside our limited knowledge. By the end of writing the book we felt so inspired and enriched by the diverse queer people we spoke to, and this is what most excites us about this project.

"As queer people we can be in danger of just assuming we know it all. That we are automatically woke and we ‘get it’ – but do we?”

Lancet-Grant said: "Do Ask, Do Tell is a wild ride through everything queer. With LGBTQ+ rights being rolled back around the world, it’s more important than ever that we – and our allies – understand each other, so we can stand strong in the face of prejudice."