This is the fifth of six international online events organised by Five Leaves Bookshop, with funding from Arts Council England. The events bring writers from our region of England together with native writers from the cities we are visiting. All of those cities are UNESCO Cities of Literature, as is Nottingham, and as Nottingham’s independent bookshop we want to help to establish links with other Cities of Literature, their authors and their bookshops.

Nicola Monaghan was born in Nottingham and grew up on council estates there. She studied mathematics at university and went on to work as a teacher, and then in finance. In 2002 she moved back to Nottingham to study Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. Her first book, The Killing Jar, won several awards. She has published novels and novellas since then, most recently Dead Flowers. Nicola was the first fellow of the National Academy of Writing, and has taught creative writing at the University of Nottingham and De Montfort University.

Ziggy Zezsyazeoviennazabrizkie was born in 1993, studied law at university, and has since written nearly thirty books. She won the Jakarta Arts Council Novel Writing Competition for Di Tanah Lada (In Pepper Land), which was later longlisted for the Khatulistiwa Literary Award. She won the same competition in 2016 with Semua Ikan di Langit (All the Fish in the Sky), for which she was awarded the Badan Bahasa Literary Award by the Indonesian Ministry of Education and Culture. Jakarta Sebelum Pagi (Jakarta Dawning) received the Editor’s Choice Award from Rolling Stones Indonesia.

Kindly hosted in Jakarta by Laura Prinsloo, and the Nottingham host is Hannah Trevarthen.

Tickets: £3 if you can afford it, free if you can’t. It is essential to book via Eventbrite.

See all six events on Eventbrite here