Queer literary event a big hit in Cork city

Em Egan Reeve is co-founder and co-host of Litreacha , a popular queer open mic event held monthly in queer-friendly bar Nudes on Lavitt’s Quay in Cork city.

A recipient of the Miriam Cotter Award, a full scholarship awarded to a promising writer accepted into University College Cork’s MA in Creative Writing, Em now devotes their free time to growing Litreacha across the Cork queer community.

Louis McCutcheon is Em’s partner, and fellow co-founder and co-host of Litreacha.

“He came to me about two-and-a-half years ago now, and said he wanted to do some sort of open mic event for queer people,” said Em. “We were already having such a good time reading poetry and meeting people, so we said, why not make an open mic for the queers?”

In June, 2024, Litreacha’s first open mic was held, and since then, they’ve collaborated with numerous literary groups and queer organisations around Cork, creating a safe space for the community to gather and express themselves. “We were really just inspired by how good the poetry scene was in Cork already. I feel like Cork is in a very big open mic era again, which I think is great!”

“Litreacha is really open to all queer creatives. It’s mostly poets we get, queer poets, which is great. We love that. We’re [Louis and I] queer poets.

“We get some people who read fiction or like short memoir, I suppose, or other forms. We have musicians too sometimes, but not as much as we want to. So we would love more career musicians. That’s really one of our top things. We’re obsessed with finding more career musicians!”

“We’ve had people present their visual art too.”

Litreacha has become such a constant in the Cork community that it’s now not only a literary event, it’s a social opportunity for artists and LGBTQ people to get to know each other.

“I’ve made friends I hadn’t met before,” said Em. “It’s definitely a social event as well, there’s a really good group of people who come every month and read. We had someone who recently came up and they just promoted this queer zine collective. Okay, awesome. This is exactly what this is for. It’s a really good space to kind of share something.”

How and why did they make the decision to make it exclusively a queer event?

“It’s a space for queer people to share their work around other queer people, which I do think can be quite comforting.

“Sometimes, reading queer poems in front of new people can be really difficult. It’s not embarrassing, it does really feel like, whoa, I’m putting myself out there, and they have no idea what I’m talking about.

“So it’s relatable and sort of nice to be amongst your peers, it’s a good place to hang out with other queer people. To meet other people who are LGBTQ+ and work with them on creative projects.”

In a collaboration with Good Day Cork, Litreacha also published their first physical literary journal on June 20 in Cork City Library, which quickly sold out. The journal features local contributors as well as writers from as far away as Hong Kong and Ukraine.

“We do have a couple of collabs coming up in the next couple of months. We’re gonna collaborate with Space Fest,” said Em.

In the past, Litreacha has collaborated with Cork Queer Nature Collective, Rebel Reads Cork, and The Lesbian Lives Conference 2026. “If Cork is a village, Litreacha is the damn mayor!” declared EM.

Recently, Litreacha collaborated with LINQ Cork, an organisation nearing 30 years old that provides support services for anyone who identifies with the term lesbian. They hosted two open mics: one exclusively for drafts under the theme of ‘progress’, following up with another open mic on at LINQ at their venue on White Street under the theme ‘queer futures’.

Part of Litreacha and LINQ’s collaboration was making Lino Print banners for Cork Pride, which, for the first time, is being organised by members of the community.

“It’s going to be more low-key,” said Em. “It’s being more community-led, like there’s not going to be big sponsorships or anything, there’s no corporate sponsorships anymore, which I think is really nice.

“Obviously, there’s people of all ages, but a lot of them [the organisers] are, like, just graduating. It’s bringing a good new perspective.”

Em is also eager for more accessible venues in Cork for literary events such as Litreacha. “Inaccessibility, it’s just not what I set out to do. It has to be physically accessible, and then to not be too loud, not to be too busy for neurodivergent people.

“Unfortunately, accessibility is so difficult in Cork, just because everything’s upstairs and everything is quite small.

“Nudes is the best place that I found, and they’ve been really accommodating in a lot of ways for us. We really do appreciate them. It’s a very queer-friendly establishment. The staff are so nice, they do really great events there.”

“Litreacha got some funding from the local community enterprise this year too, so we’ll be able to buy new sound equipment with that which is exciting! We’re going to try and do some kind of publication of Cork poets, so keep an eye out for that.”

Digital copies of the Good Day Cork literary journal are available at €6.50 via LITREACHA’s Instagram account, with all funds going towards the next edition and being able to provide contributors with free copies. They’re always happy to hear from potential collaborators via email @letterscork@gmail.com or LITREACHA’s Instagram page. @_litreacha