Paul Burston

Paul Burston is a Welsh journalist and author. Born in York and raised in South Wales, Burston attended Brynteg Comprehensive School and studied English, Drama and Film Studies at university. He worked for the London gay policing group GALOP and was an activist with ACT-UP before moving into journalism. He edited, for some years, the gay and lesbian (later LGBT) section of Time Out magazine.

His first novel Shameless, published in 2001, was praised by The New York Times.

Burston's novel The Black Path was published by Accent Press in September 2016 and was long-listed in a Guardian "Not The Booker Prize" feature article.

He is the founder and host of award-winning LGBT literary salon Polari at the Southbank Centre, and founder of The Polari First Book Prize for new LGBT writing.

By October 2018, five novels and two short story collections by Burston had been published. In that month, The Bookseller reported that his sixth novel The Closer I Get was published by Orenda Books as part of a two book deal. The Closer I Get, published in July 2019, was partly inspired by the author's experience of online harassment.