Ian Duhig has written seven books of poetry, most recently The Blind Roadmaker (Picador 2016), a PBS Recommendation shortlisted for the Forward Best Collection and TS Eliot Prizes. Duhig worked with the homeless for fifteen years before becoming a writer.  and has won the Forward Best Poem Prize once and the National Poetry Competition twice.

Find out more about Ian on Twitter (@ianduhig) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/ian.duhig).

This interview is pre-recorded and will be released on our YouTube channel at 7pm on October 27th. Tune in then and join in the live chat, or watch any time afterwards at your leisure.

In 1729, Jonathan Swift suggested in ‘A Modest Proposal’ (follow the link to read the essay for free) that poor Irish peasants could sell their babies as food for the rich. If this satire was meant to goad those in power to alleviate the dire state of the Irish peasantry, it did not succeed. Famine continued to haunt Ireland, culminating in the devastation of The Great Famine of the 1840s. The historical context will be followed by a short discussion of Swift’s document, and some poetry of the Great Hunger.

The Irish Studies Series (Thursdays, 29 Oct – 19 Nov): In this short course, we will explore those links, focusing on four key periods. Dr Patrick Murphy will give a short account of the historical and political background, and Dr Deirdre O’Byrne will talk briefly on some literary representations of the chosen period. Each session will end with a Q & A session from the audience.

All sessions are live online and will subsequently be made available on the Five Leaves Bookshop YouTube channel. To register and receive a link to access the live Zoom event, please email events@fiveleaves.co.uk.

PLEASE NOTE: registration for all our live online events closes 2 hours before the event starts.

All sessions are free, although you may wish to make a donation to Emmanuel House, Nottingham.

“Britain’s most innovative playwright” – Plays International

Kevin Fegan has written to commission over fifty stage plays for a wide variety of theatre, including award-winning plays Excess XS (Contact Theatre 1992 – first play about the rave scene) and Strange Attractors (Contact in association with Granada TV 1994 – first play about virtual reality), 52 Degrees South (Imperial War Museum North 2002), White Trash (Quarantine at Contact 2004) and more recently Slave (Feelgood Theatre at The Lowry and national tour 2010-11), Obama the Mamba, and Bess the Commoner Queen (First Art/Derby Live 2017 and national tour 2019).

He has written several plays and drama serials for BBC Radio 4, and worked as a storyline writer for Granada Television’s Coronation Street.

He has also published ten collections of poetry, and edited several anthologies. He is a regular performer of his own poetry. Five Leaves publishes three of his pamphlets: Blast, Racer, and Let the Left Hand Sing.

Kevin has worked extensively as a writer-in-residence in a wide variety of community and education environments, in particular in prisons.

This interview is pre-recorded and will be released on our YouTube channel at 7pm on November 3rd. Tune in then and join in the live chat, or watch any time afterwards at your leisure.

After the fall of Charles Stewart Parnell, many Irish people turned to ancient Irish mythology and older traditions in a morale-boosting movement that became known as the Celtic Twilight or the Irish Renaissance. Many of the writers held different political viewpoints, from WB Yeats to Pádraig Pearse. James Joyce also comments on the period in his writings.

The Irish Studies Series (Thursdays, 29 Oct – 19 Nov): In this short course, we will explore those links, focusing on four key periods. Dr Patrick Murphy will give a short account of the historical and political background, and Dr Deirdre O’Byrne will talk briefly on some literary representations of the chosen period. Each session will end with a Q & A session from the audience.

All sessions are live online and will subsequently be made available on the Five Leaves Bookshop YouTube channel. To register and receive a link to access the live Zoom event, please email events@fiveleaves.co.uk.

PLEASE NOTE: registration for all our live online events closes 2 hours before the event starts.

All sessions are free, although you may wish to make a donation to Emmanuel House, Nottingham.

We regret that due to uncertainty about the impact of COVID-19 means we have to cancel this year’s radical bookfair. We hope, however, to run some online events over the same weekend.

Please check back later if you are not on our mailing list

Mark the date!

25 tables of books, eight free talks, cafe on site

Last year at least 400 people came to our third radical bookfair, many staying most of the day to attend the talks by local, regional and national speakers.  We already have stall bookings from Northern Herald Books, Nottingham People’s History, Sparrow’s Nest, Ex-Libris, Motts and Derbyshire Labour History Society and the Anarchist Communist Group!

Please get in touch if you are interest in a stall.

Venue: Mechanics Institute,  3 North Sherwood St, Nottingham NG1 4EZ.

The Mechanics Institute rooms are full accessible.

Free, not tickets or booking required.

Last years talks concentrated on class, labour history and race with speakers including Priyamvada Gopal, Animik Saha, the group behind Prison: a survival guide and Five Leaves’ own Andrew Graves. Previous radical bookfairs have included talks on diversity in children’s picture books and travels in Eastern Europe! What will we do in 2020?

Speakers in 2020 include Dana Mills on Rosa Luxemburg

Easter 1916, the War of Independence, and Civil War.

Easter 1916 was known as the Poets’ Rising, so many of its leaders were writers. The conflicts arising from the birth of the Irish nation were immortalised in the plays of Seán Ó Casey, short stories of Frank O’Connor and prose and poetry of their contemporaries.

The Irish Studies Series (Thursdays, 29 Oct – 19 Nov): In this short course, we will explore those links, focusing on four key periods. Dr Patrick Murphy will give a short account of the historical and political background, and Dr Deirdre O’Byrne will talk briefly on some literary representations of the chosen period. Each session will end with a Q & A session from the audience.

All sessions are live online and will subsequently be made available on the Five Leaves Bookshop YouTube channel. To register and receive a link to access the live Zoom event, please email events@fiveleaves.co.uk.

PLEASE NOTE: registration for all our live online events closes 2 hours before the event starts.

All sessions are free, although you may wish to make a donation to Emmanuel House, Nottingham.

The 1980s in Ireland saw several amendments to the Irish Constitution which affected women’s rights, alongside high-profile events such as the Kerry Babies Tribunal and the death of Ann Lovett. In the 21st century, Ireland has radically changed, with a population voting for rights to abortion, divorce, and same-sex marriage.

The Irish Studies Series (Thursdays, 29 Oct – 19 Nov): In this short course, we will explore those links, focusing on four key periods. Dr Patrick Murphy will give a short account of the historical and political background, and Dr Deirdre O’Byrne will talk briefly on some literary representations of the chosen period. Each session will end with a Q & A session from the audience.

All sessions are live online and will subsequently be made available on the Five Leaves Bookshop YouTube channel. To register and receive a link to access the live Zoom event, please email events@fiveleaves.co.uk.

PLEASE NOTE: registration for all our live online events closes 2 hours before the event starts.

All sessions are free, although you may wish to make a donation to Emmanuel House, Nottingham.