Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money and human rights.

Starting from this provocative idea, Sapiens goes on to retell the history of our species from a completely fresh perspective. It explains that money is the most pluralistic system of mutual trust ever devised; that capitalism is the most successful religion ever invented; that the treatment of animals in modern agriculture is probably the worst crime in history; and that even though we are far more powerful than our ancient ancestors, we aren’t much happier.

By combining profound insights with a remarkably vivid language, Sapiens acquired cult status among diverse audiences, captivating teenagers as well as university professors, animal rights activists alongside government ministers. By 2018, over 10 million copies have been sold, and the book has been translated into nearly 50 languages.

Our book group is open to all. You can attend every time, or just the once if you fancy talking about a particular book, or all stops in between. All we ask is that you read the book in advance.

You can obtain the book however you like, but in the lead up to the event we offer 15% discount off book group books to all our customers.

For the avoidance of doubt, Prof. Harari will not be at the event!

Free, refreshments included but please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

A Nottingham Poetry Society event, in association with Happenstance Press – publisher of D.A. Prince and Maria Taylor

D.A. Prince has written two full collections for Happenstance, but her latest with them is a pamphlet where she considers ephemera —rail tickets, a supermarket till receipt, an old postcard, a scribbled note found in a second-hand purchase. You may have a pile of your own half-read books, threatening to topple and expose their markers. What secrets will they spill?

Maria Taylor’s first collection, Melanchrini (Nine Arches), was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Since 2015, she has been Reviews Editor for Under the Radar, and she blogs at Commonplace.

‘Commonplace’, however, is precisely what she is not. There’s no telling what she’ll do from one poem to the next, which is only one of the things that makes this pamphlet such a delight. As she said herself in a Poetry Spotlight interview: ‘A successful collection is a little world in itself.’ And so it is

£3 on the door, refreshments included. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Five Leaves is pleased to be a partner in this conference, with stalls and events.

Full details to follow

www.nottingham.ac.uk/conference/fac-arts/clas/transnational-radical-film-cultures/index.aspx

Clive Myer was the director of the International Film School Wales and the Film Academy at the University of Glamorgan. He is an independent filmmaker.

In this talk Clive Myer will be purging the obstructive line between the making of and the theorising on film, uniting theory and practice in order to move beyond the commercial confines of Hollywood. He will be drawing on the ideas of writers such as Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen and flimmakers such as Peter Greenaway and Mike Figgis.

He will be joined by Mike Wayne (England’s Discontents, Political Cultures and National Identities) and Jack Newsinger, Steve Presence and Mike Wayne (Contemporary Radical Film Culture: Networks, Organisations
and Activists – forthcoming)

The discussion will be of interest to students, academics, and independent filmmakers as well as for anyone interested in new perspectives on culture and film.

Free event, with refreshments provided.

Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

This event forms part of…

Federico García Lorca was born on 5 June 1898  and was executed on 19 August 1936 by nationalist forces in Franco’s Spain early in the Spanish Civil War. He was a poet, playwright,  theatre director and gay. His body has never been found.

He achieved international recognition as a member of the “Generation of 27”, a group of mostly poets who introduced European styles like symbolism, futurism and surrealism into Spanish theatre. His best known work includes Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernalda Alba.

This talk – on Lorca’s birthday – will include short readings from his poetry and plays, and cover his life and work.

Stephen Roberts is Associate Professor and Reader in Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies and Head of Department, Faculty of Arts

Tickets: £3.00 on the door, including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Insiders/Outsiders is a UK-wide arts festival which runs throughout 2019 and which examines the extraordinarily rich and pervasive contribution of refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe to the visual culture, art education and art-world structures of the United Kingdom. In every field, émigrés arriving from Europe in the 1930s – supported by a small number of like-minded individuals already resident in the UK – introduced a professionalism, internationalism and bold avant-gardism to a British art world not known for these attributes.

At a time when the issue of immigration is much debated, this illustrated talk serves as a reminder of the importance of cultural cross-fertilization and of the deep, long-lasting and wide-ranging contribution that refugees make to British life.

Monica Bohm-Duchen is the creative director of the www.insidersoutsidersfestival.org and is an art historian.

Tickets: £3 on the door, including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Five Leaves Bookshop is organising several events in Nottingham as part of the festival. Contact us for more information.

Leading up to Nottingham Refugee Week….

Lyndsey Stonebridge will present a  highly topical and timely account of refugee history and literatature, drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, and Simone Weil.

She has written the first literary history of modern statelessness that raises vital questions about sovereignty, humanism, and the future of human rights which highlights the importance of modern literature in understanding the challenges of today’s refugee ‘crisis’.

Lyndsey Stonebridge is Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham.

Chaired by Karen Adler, University of Nottingham Department of History

Tickets: £3.00 on the door, including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

In his first book, leading political commentator Aaron Bastani, from Novara Media, conjures a new politics: a vision of a world of unimaginable hope, highlighting how we might move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology and build meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society heralds the beginning of history.

Fully Automated Luxury Communism promises a radically new left future for everyone. And it’s a great book title.  In association with Verso Books.

Tickets: £3.00 including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Join us for the official Nottingham Launch of Ben Norris’ wonderful pamphlet some ending!

Ben Norris is well known locally and nationally for the quality he brings to his performance. And while his pamphlet some ending has been written very much for the page, we know his words will be brought to vivid life on this night.

Supporting him are two Birmingham based poets Luke Kennard and Hannah Swingler.  Their books, Truffle Hound and This dress has pockets were released to great acclaim by Verve Poetry Press in the last year.

Ben Norris is a poet, playwright and actor. He is two-time national poetry champion – 2017 BBC Poetry Slam and 2013 UK All-Stars Poetry Slam – and has appeared everywhere from Latitude Festival to the Proms at the Royal Albert Hall.

Ben is from Nottingham and is currently poet-in-residence for Nottinghamshire Libraries, and a Creative Associate at Nottingham Playhouse. He also plays Ben Archer in ‘The Archers’ on BBC Radio Four. 

Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist. His books have been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He is a Next Generation Poet and lectures in the School of English at the University of Birmingham.

Hannah Swingler is a poet, teacher and artist, born and bred in Birmingham.  She was the winner of CoachesSLAM 2018, as well as coaching the University of Birmingham’s uniSLAM team to victory.  This year she is the face of the Nationwide TV ads along with Verve poet Matt Abbott.

Verve Poetry Press is a new Birmingham based publisher dedicated to promoting and showcasing Birmingham and Midlands poetic talent in colourful and exciting ways – as you would expect from a press that has grown out of the giddy and flamboyant, annual four days of poetry and spoken word that is Verve Poetry Festival, Birmingham.

Tickets:  £4.00 (£2.00 for students) on the door at the event. Please let us know you are coming though, on events@fiveleaves.co.uk. Refreshments are included.

Editors Ray French, Moy McCrory and Kath McKay will be reading from their book of essays, fiction and poetry by second generation Irish writers in Britain , whose contributors attempt to capture the diverse experience of a group of people largely rendered invisible.

The sections touch upon what it is to be authentic, what’s new about the experience of ‘diaspora’, what evolves and what changes. Many of the contributors acknowledge that anti-Irish racism has been part of their lives and the work reflects the tensions of not belonging but of ploughing on.

Ray French is the author of two novels, All That is Mine and Going Under and the joint editor of End Notes: ten stories about loss, mourning and commemoration.

Moy McCrory writes academically about identity and class. Her own fiction has been translated into fifteen languages and she was included in the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing.

Kath McKay has published two novels, three poetry collections and short stories, some of which have been broadcast on Radio 4. Like Ray French, she teaches at the University of Hull.

In association with Nottingham Irish Studies Group

Tickets: £3.00 on the door, including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

A novel of emigration, longing and loss

“We’re used to getting these kinds of stories from an American perspective in which moving to America is the natural thing to do. Tóibín makes his emigrant’s story more painful without simply reversing those assumptions or ruling out an ironic distance from postwar Irish insularity. (A prim young woman from Belfast shares her views on Brooklyn’s Italian and Jewish populations: “I didn’t come all the way to America, thank you, to hear people talking Italian on the street or see them wearing funny hats.”) Eilis herself is an interesting character, less defenceless and more troubled than she initially seems, and the novel uncovers the “dark, uncertain” areas within her with a very light touch. Her rejection of her landlady’s proffered friendship, and her encounter with her sexually wistful female boss, are handled as delicately as any scene Tóibín has done, although here and there his delicacy doesn’t exclude a note of ribald amusement as well as worldly melancholy.”              From the Guardian review

Our book group is open to all. You can attend every time, or just the once if you fancy talking about a particular book, or all stops in between. All we ask is that you read the book in advance.

You can obtain the book however you like, but in the lead up to the event we offer 15% discount off book group books to all our customers.

Free, refreshments included but please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Lowdham Book Festival ends its twentieth year with its traditional “last Saturday”, including the region’s biggest book fair, lots of free talks for adults plus a children’s programme, a cafe, and a day out in the country (well, ten miles from Nottingham).

The main festival is organised by The Bookcase in Lowdham, but the last day by Five Leaves.

Contact us for stall details.

Full programme timing

Unusually for our book group, our choice this month is a young adult fiction novel, by a local writer.

The theme is what happens when you break the rules… the most important is to NEVER go beyond the wall, never to go Outside. So, what will happen?

Landfill is a boy raised with animals behind the walls of Hinterland – an industrial landscape succumbing to weeds and wild flowers. His guardian, a tormented scavenger called Babagoo, protects him from the horrors of Outside. But as he gets older, Landfill’s curiosity is winning out over obedience and he begins to question the whether Outside is deserving of such fear and loathing…

Our book group is open, and you can come to one event or them all. All we ask is you read the book in advance.

For the second half of the evening, Darren will join us, not for a “reading” but to discuss issues raised in the first half!

We don’t mind where you get the book, but in the lead up we offer 15% discount on book group books.

Free, refreshments provided

Do let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

Please join us to launch and to discuss issues raised in Sam Hope’s new book on using a person-centred approach with trans clients for counsellors and therapists.

Trans clients are frequently doubted and misunderstood by professional counsellors. Sam’s book will be essential reading for professionals who want to support trans people’s mental health and wellbeing, helping to rebalance the relationship between the therapist and the client.

Sam Hope is a non-binary trans therapist with many years’ of working with the LGBT community and is a well-known trans community worker/campaigner and blogger.

This event will be of interest to any counselling or mental health professional who wants to understand more about working with trans and gender diverse clients as well, of course, to trans people generally and particularly trans people who work with other trans people.

Tickets: £4.00 (£2 students) which includes refreshments and is redeemable against any purchase.

Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk

To celebrate the release of his new book Cursed Britain, historian Thomas Waters presents the fascinating but largely unknown history of witchcraft and magic in modern times.

This evocative, interactive talk will explore the many styles and types of magic that have thrived in Britain since the early 1800s. From cunning-men and wise-women to Scottish warlocks, Welsh cursing wells, Roma fortune-tellers, shapeshifting witches and numerous other spiritual healers, it’s a diverse and amazing topic.

Tom has spent the best part of the last decade busily researching the modern history of witchcraft and magic. He’s enthralled by everything mystical, but is particularly interested in the experiences of people who believe they’re cursed, as well as the individuals who are deemed responsible, and the spiritual healers who provide aid in times of great crisis.

The secretive but extraordinary story of witchcraft in modern times stretches from the rural world of Georgian Britain, through the territories of the British Empire, to the multicultural present day. Tom will be telling some spellbinding stories and, for magical practitioners amongst you, giving tips about how you could use historic witchcraft in your own spells. Believer, sceptic or not sure: all are welcome and discussion is encouraged.

Tickets: £4 including refreshments, redeemable against book purchase

This event will be fully booked so it is essential to let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk