[First Date Festival 2026]

This event is part of FIRST DATE ROMANCE FICTION FESTIVAL, which Lighthouse books are co-hosting with Book Lovers Bookshop! You can book tickets to their First Date events on their website.

About our speaker: Beth O'Leary is a Sunday Times bestselling author whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages. Her debut, The Flatshare, sold over a million copies and is now a major TV series. Her subsequent novels, The Switch, The Road Trip, The No-Show and The Wake-Up Call, were all instant bestsellers. A TV series of The Road Trip was first aired in 2024. Beth lives in the Hampshire countryside, and if she's not in her writing shed, you'll probably find her chasing a toddler, with a strong coffee in hand...

About our chair: Rachel Wood is the founder of Rare Birds, a thriving independent bookstore in the heart of Edinburgh that was named “one of the coolest new bookshops” by the Sunday Times. As a former theatre kid, Rachel’s love of storytelling began on stage, but by the time she was a teenager she’d figured out it was much easier to write the lines rather than to learn them. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Rachel first moved to Edinburgh to pursue a masters in creative writing and has lived there ever since.