Nancy Campbell combines memoir, scientific and cultural history with a bewitching account of landscape and place, which will appeal to readers of Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin and Olivia Laing. 

Nancy Campbell reads from her latest book which combines memoir, scientific and cultural history with a bewitching account of landscape and place. As Writer in Residence at the world’s northernmost museum – at Upernavik in Greenland – during the dark weeks of midwinter Campbell was able to experience first-hand the changing life of Arctic coastal communities. Captivated by the solid yet impermanent nature of ice, by its stark, rugged beauty, she then set out to explore it in all its facets. From the Bodleian Library archives to the traces left by polar expeditions, from the first Greenlandic libraries to the curling rinks of Kinross, her new book examines the impact of ice on our lives at a time when it is itself under threat from climate change.

Carol Rowntree Jones will introduce, chair and be in discussion with Nancy

The Library of Ice is a beautifully rendered evocation of the interplay of people and their environment on a fragile planet, and of a writer’s quest to define the value of books in a changing world.

Nancy is a poet, essayist and art critic who read here in 2014 – then with early poems, some in Greenlandic, which were published in her debut collection Disko Bay (shortlisted for the Forward Prize 2016). Her reading was memorable.

Admission: £4, including refreshments. Please let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk.