K. Patrick’s debut novel Mrs. S is published on 8th June 2023 and can be pre-ordered now. K will be joining us to tell us more about their book alongside Nell Stevens on 22nd June. Tickets can be bought here.

Powerfully sensual and sublimely stylish, Mrs. S is a tale of queer love that smoulders with the heat of summer. In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of ‘matron’.

Within this landscape of immense privilege, in which the girls can sense the slightest weakness in those around them, she finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body. That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn ever closer into Mrs. S’s world and their unspoken desire blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity.

But, as the summer begins to fade, both women know that a choice must be made. K Patrick’s portrait of the butch experience is revelatory; exploring the contested terrain of our bodies, our desires and the constraints society places around both. Mrs. S marks the arrival of a major new literary talent, unlike any other.