This is the story of how DIVA changed my life. Not just once, but three times. Picture the scene. I am a teenager living in Leeds with my mum, who does not know that I am gay. In fact, no one knows. Although that one female friend I was snogging in secret for several years might have an inkling. So here I am, an undercover lesbian. I’m scared stiff of disappointing my family, being an outcast in society and never fulfilling my creative ambitions because after all, “Who cares what some random dyke has to say?”

It’s no wonder I’m in such turmoil. A child of the 90s, I have grown up under Section 28, the Conservative law making it illegal for teachers to say anything about LGBTQIA people that’s not completely horrible. As far as I can tell, “the gays” are second-class citizens. I have only ever heard the word “lesbian” as an insult or the punchline to a joke that does not make me laugh, but instead makes me shrivel with shame. Then one fateful day in a nondescript branch of WHSmith, I find DIVA. Actually, maybe that’s the wrong way round. Perhaps it is DIVA that finds me, because make no mistake: DIVA is a magazine that wants to find those who need it most. DIVA strives to be a glorious, galvanising beacon of hope and rage and lust and joy for sapphics everywhere. DIVA wants to let us know that, despite what we may have been led to believe, we are not alone. Nor are we broken. On the contrary, we are many and we are magnificent.