La Biblioteka

Adrian Tierney-Jones: A Pub for all Seasons
2025-03-11 18:30 - 20:30 (Europe/London)
at Leah’s Yard

Ticket & Book

Ticket & Voucher

Join us for an intimate evening during Sheffield Beer Week as we welcome celebrated beer writer Adrian Tierney-Jones to Leah’s Yard. The author will be reading from his magical new work “A Pub For All Seasons,” exploring British pub culture through the changing seasons.

Enjoy drinks from the Hop Hideout bar while soaking in the stories.

About the book:

Ever since he was old enough to enjoy them, award-winning journalist and beer-expert Adrian Tierney-Jones has been visiting and drinking in pubs all over the country.

As the world opened up post-Covid and we were all finally able to return to our locals, Adrian’s love for this British institution burned even brighter and he promised himself he would travel around the UK in search of the best pub he could find. The story of one man through the year and his travels to all corners of the country, A Pub For All Seasons follows Adrian as he visits far-flung corners of the country. From mellow, gentle pubs in autumn and dim, cosy spots in winter to bright, lively bars in spring and wondrous, buzzing gardens in summer, Adrian speaks to locals and landlords, hears unique sounds and stories, and samples food, drink and atmosphere.

He watches the wild and beautiful similarities, differences between pubs, and notices how they all shift, tonally, throughout the year. And what started as a simple quest to find a nice place to sit and drink, ends up revealing to Adrian so much more: the secret to what truly makes the perfect British local across the four seasons.

About the author:

Adrian Tierney-Jones is an award-winning journalist and writer on beer, travel and pubs and was Beer Writer of Year in 2017. He loves nothing better than to wander cities, towns and the countryside lovingly and visit their pubs and bars. He has contributed to many magazines and newspapers and books include The Seven Moods of Craft Beer and United Kingdom of Beer, and has also edited three editions of 1001 Beers to Try Before You Die. He is often to be found in front of an audience with a glass telling tales of drinking beer in bars across the world. He lives in Exeter.

Location:

Leah’s Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S1 4HP

S1 4HP

DADADA presents Amelia Fletcher & Rob Pursey
2024-12-01 11:00 - 11:30
At La Biblioteka

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DADADA returns with beloved Oxford indie-pop pioneers Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey of legendary pop band Heavenly. They will perform songs from their duo project The Catenary Wires at our bookshop for a rare and intimate Sunday morning performance. Amelia and Rob have been influential figures in the indie-pop scene from their debut band Talulah Gosh, they went on to form Heavenly who have crafted some of the most perfectly formed guitar pop of the past three decades led by Amelia’s distinctive vocals. Amelia and Rob went on to take part in many other musical projects including Tender Trap and, most recently Swansea Sound. Get ready for a magical collision of jangle and genius under the bookshop lights.

This will be an incredibly intimate, acoustic all-ages gig.

Appropriately, coffee and bakery treats from Meersbrook’s finest bakery I Said Bread will be available to perk you up!

Location:

S1 4HP

Intermezzo: Sheffield Feminist Book Club
2024-11-28 19:00 - 21:00
At La Biblioteka

Tickets (via eventbrite)

Come join us for our next book club meeting at La Biblioteka on 28 November at 7pm where we will be discussing Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. Grab a bite to eat or drink, settle in, and get ready for some lively discussions with fellow book lovers.

Whether you’ve read the book cover to cover or just want to listen in, all are welcome to join the conversation (disclaimer: spoilers will be discussed!). Let’s dive into the themes, characters, and everything in between. Don’t miss out on this chance to connect with like-minded individuals and explore feminist literature together. See you there!

About the book:

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking..

About the author:

Sally Rooney is a writer who has been dubbed “the first great millennial novelist” after publishing several well-received novels that highlight issues of class inequality, intimacy, art, and politics in the 21st century. Her best-known novel is Normal People (2018), which she adapted into a popular television miniseries in 2020.

Ticket prices:

Tickets for this event are £13. If you cannot afford them then just drop us an email at: sheffieldfembookclub@gmail.com and we’ll see what we can do.

Refund policy:

We are over the moon that our events are becoming so popular, so because of that we have made are operating a no refund policy. We are more than happy for you to use your ticket for a future book club, or to give your ticket to a fellow book club member, but as of 2024 – we will no longer giving refunds. Apologies in advance!

The Feminist Book Club House Rules:

We welcome feminists from all walks of life and backgrounds, and this group is open to everyone – we want this to be a fully inclusive space;You don’t need to be an ‘expert feminist’ (whatever that means) to be involved – we want to read books that everyone can enjoy, and that cater to people’s different experiences and understandings of feminism;This is primarily a social space, for meeting and getting to know like-minded people – so while feminism can be a heavy topic, we hope to keep this more on the fun side;This is a judgement free zone – don’t belittle or undermine other members, or those who don’t have the same ideas as you. Don’t shut down other people’s views and be respectful;

If you feel like anyone goes against any of these values, let us know!

Location:

S1 4HP

Jemima Foxtrot with Suzannah Evans: Treasure, Green
2024-11-26 19:00 - 20:30
At La Biblioteka

Treasure & RSVP

Green & RSVP

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Join us for the Sheffield Launch of Jemima Foxtrot’s Treasure, supported by Sheffield poet Suzannah Evans with a reading from her new pamphlet Green.

Jemima Foxtrot’s Treasure is a shining work of alchemy and liberation, exploring power dynamics, sex work, desire, and female friendship with a fresh and playful perspective. Foxtrot investigates shimmering sexualities, the economies of desire, the theft of childhood and pathways towards reclaiming it. Her language is lush: intimate, intricate, full of fertile earth’s possibility. The poems of Treasure live up to its name: showing us where the gold is—the joy—how to feed it into the soil of our lives.

“Foxtrot is a savvy, sometimes savage, sensualist; her poetic speakers alert to injustice, but alive to pleasure in every way that counts. These are superbly tactile poems, full of wit, vigour and feminist jouissance.” — Fran Lock

Suzannah Evans’ new pamphlet introduces us to Green, half human, half angry nature spirit. Green serves as a stunt double for our rage and complicity in nature’s destruction, showing us nature’s delights so we may mourn their loss more deeply.

Location:

La Biblioteka, Leah’s Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S1 4HP

S1 4HP

DADADA Zine presents Pete Dale (solo, live)
2024-11-16 10:30 - 11:00
At La Biblioteka

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We’re incredibly excited to be hosting DADADA Zine, which will present a pre-matinee solo performance by Pete Dale, of Milky Wimpshake and Knitting Circle fame, fresh from playing Hallamshire House the night before.

This will be an incredibly intimate, acoustic all-ages gig.

Appropriately, coffee and bakery treats from Meersbrook’s finest bakery I Said Bread will be available to perk you up!

About the performer/author:

Pete Dale studied at Sunderland Polytechnic 1989-92. On graduating, he played in several indie/punk underground bands (Pussycat Trash, Red Monkey, Milky Wimpshake) and set up the cult DIY label/distributor Slampt which ran very successfully between 1992 and 2000. Taking up school teaching in 2001, Pete completed an MA in Music (2005) and then a PhD at Newcastle (2010) whilst simultaneously working as a teacher. He took an early career fellowship at Oxford Brookes in 2012, subsequently becoming Senior Lecturer in Music at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2013 (2013-21). He is currently Lecturer in Music Education at University of York. His monographs include Anyone Can Do It: Tradition, Empowerment and the Punk Underground (Ashgate, 2012), Popular Music and the Politics of Novelty (Bloomsbury, 2016) and Engaging Students with Music Education: DJ Decks, Urban Music and Child-centred Learning (2017). A forthcoming monograph on the evolution of indie as a genre across the 1980s is currently near completion. Pete is associate editor of the Punk & Post–Punk journal and a founding member of the Punk Scholars Network.

Location:

La Biblioteka

Book Launch - Linda Stewart-Pitts: The World Student Games, Sheffield 1991
2024-09-28 18:00 - 20:00
at La Biblioteka, Leah’s Yard

Join us for a nostalgic journey back to the 1991 World Student Games in Sheffield.

Linda Pitts’ new photobook, The World Student Games Sheffield 1991, by Cafe Royal Books offers a captivating glimpse into this historic sporting event. Rediscover the athletes, the locations, and the lasting impact the games – which came at a time of huge potential for the city, and their own way, transformative – had on the city, at a time of renewed optimism and potential.

We invite you to join us at Leah’s Yard for a special event celebrating the launch of this fascinating publication.

This and a selection of Cafe Royal Books will be available to buy and get signed on the night.

About the book:

The Spirit of ‘91

Around the turn of the millennium I landed my first job, at Don Valley Stadium, working as a gym assistant and general dogsbody for Sheffield International Venues, a council-run enterprise set up in 1988 ahead of the World Student Games. To save money I would walk two and a half miles from our terrace house in Firth Park, over Jenkin Hill near the Brendan Ingle boxing gym, and through Attercliffe, the old Industrial area, to get to work. I remember the ominous cries and thuds of heavy machinery, that always seemed both loud and distant, and echoed through a landscape that had seen better days. Then I’d enter this huge underused sporting facility in the middle of it all, which held its own echoes, though I loved the job and the building, which I thought of as a giant playground. The rubber floors looked like Lego, the support columns and beams were exposed in childish colours, and there was hardly anything to do, so I spent most of my time daydreaming, or racing around the cavernous interior and outdoor race track in a golf buggy pretending to complete various chores.

I couldn’t have put it into words then, but what all this amounts to is my coming of age at a time when Sheffield felt haunted by various, multilayered failed visions; of growing up in the wreckage of futures that never arrived. The modernism championed by John L Womersley, the postwar city planner who reimagined Sheffield after the Blitz, had by the end of the century largely fallen into decrepitude, left covered in graffiti or hidden behind late 80s postmodern cladding – brutalist buildings tarted up with primary colours and cheap ornamental gestures. Even during the New Labour boom time, Meadowhall Shopping Centre, erected on the grounds of an old steel works in 1990, was reminiscent of The Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, riddled with the ghosts of what came before, or what might have been. Now, those attempts at covering up the industrial decline are fading too; Don Valley stadium is no more, Meadowhall is a shadow of its former self, and any infrastructure in those once vibrant 80s hues looks ghostly and weather worn.

But these images taken by my Mum, Linda, when she worked as a volunteer for the World Student Games, take me back to a moment of optimism. We’d just returned from a brief and utterly bonkers stint living in Japan at the height of its bubble economy in 1990, the year in which Nelson Mandela was released from prison, Germany was reunified, and the UK grew closer to Europe than ever before, set to join the EEC by 1992. Sheffield’s hosting of the games was controversial even at the time (the huge debt accrued only paid off this year), but part of an attempt to reimagine a city – whose industrial heritage had been decimated during Thatcher’s reign – as a city of sport and leisure. I was there with my Mum as a child, and remember the buzzing international atmosphere around the student village, housed in a now demolished section of the brutalist Hyde Park Flats. For my family, having just returned from affluent Tokyo, seeing the world come to Sheffield was a welcome reminder of something bigger than our struggling hometown, and signalled a future of global connectedness. Yet it still amazes me, as I look at these photos, that they were taken on the same camera my parents used to take images of the neon-lit futurism in Japan only a year earlier, and calls to mind the words of Cyberpunk novelist William Gibson; “the future is already here, it’s just not very evenly distributed”. 1991 was the year Gibson wrote his novel “The Difference Engine,” which explores this very idea. What is left, then, is a reminder that the relationship between working class communities and globalisation has always been complex and often ambivalent.

Johny Pitts, 2024

About the photographer:

Linda Stewart-Pitts met her husband, an American soul singer, at Peter Stringfellow’s Mojo Club in Sheffield. Together, they raised three children. In her 50s, Linda returned to education, earning a BTEC National Diploma in Travel and Tourism, a Degree in Recreation and Tourism Management, a PGCE in Teaching, and a Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. She retired at 60 as a Civil Servant and is also a member of British Mensa. Her background, passion for travel, and qualifications led her to volunteer for the World Student Games, and as they say, the rest is history.

Location:

S1 4HP

Sheffield Feminist Book Club: August author special with Caroline Magennis
2024-08-14 19:00 - 21:00 | La Biblioteka, Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S3 4HP, United Kingdom
August’s author event

Join us for our latest author event, where we’ll sit down with Caroline Magennis, to discuss her fantastic book Harpy: A Childfree Manifesto on Wednesday 14 August, 7-9:00 pm at La Biblioteka, Sheffield.

Bits to remember:

This event is open to all and you’ll get an opportunity to ask Caroline questions, get your book signed and meet plenty of other book lovers!

Date – Wednesday 14 August

Time – 7-9:00pm

Venue – La Biblioteka, 61 Eyre Lane, Sheffield, S1 3GF

About the book:Each generation has more childfree women than the one before. For many, it is an active decision made for a wide range of reasons.Despite this growing trend, we continue to live in a society where women are often judged for deciding to remain child-free – for not conforming to narrow expectations. For being a Harpy.

In this timely and thoughtful book, Caroline Magennis looks beyond the often-divisive conversation around women who choose to be childfree and offers an alternative message of hope and celebration.With humour and intelligence, she explores why motherhood isn’t right for everybody and how any woman – whether a parent or childfree – can live a full life, while also reminding the reader that your freedoms and the right to autonomy should never be taken for granted.

About Caroline Magennis:

Caroline Magennis is an academic and writer based in Manchester. Her writing has appeared in The Independent, Prospect Magazine and The Irish Times. Her book, Northern Irish Writing After the Troubles, has been named the joint winner of the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies Monograph Prize 2022.

Ticket prices:

Tickets for this event are £13. If you cannot afford them then just drop us an email at: sheffieldfembookclub@gmail.com and we’ll see what we can do.

Refund policy:

We are over the moon that our events are becoming so popular, so because of that we have made are operating a no refund policy. We are more than happy for you to use your ticket for a future book club, or to give your ticket to a fellow book club member, but as of 2024 – we will no longer giving refunds. Apologies in advance!

Sheffield Feminist Book Club House Rules:

We welcome feminists from all walks of life and backgrounds, and this group is open to everyone – we want this to be a fully inclusive space;

You don’t need to be an ‘expert feminist’ (whatever that means) to be involved – we want to read books that everyone can enjoy, and that cater to people’s different experiences and understandings of feminism;

This is primarily a social space, for meeting and getting to know like-minded people – so while feminism can be a heavy topic, we hope to keep this more on the fun side;

This is a judgement free zone – don’t belittle or undermine other members, or those who don’t have the same ideas as you. Don’t shut down other people’s views and be respectful;

If you feel like anyone goes against any of these values, let us know!

And Other Stories Summer Party
2024-08-13 18:30 - 21:00
🎉On Tuesday, 13 August, the annual summer celebration of And Other Stories arrives at La Biblioteka, welcoming writers Andrzej Tichý and Tim Etchells. Tichý will read from his acclaimed debut collection of stories, Purity, translated from Swedish by Nichola Smalley, which And Other Stories just published. Etchells will also be reading from new work.

Copies of Tichý’s and Etchell’s work, including Tichý’s International Booker longlisted novel, Wretchedness, and Endland, Etchell’s brutal, comical series of cautionary tales, will be on sale.

A paid bar will be provided!

We cannot wait to celebrate with you!

Claire Carroll with Daisy Hildyard: The Unreliable Nature Writer
2024-06-18 18:30 - 20:00
At La Biblioteka

Join us during Indie Bookshop Week at La Biblioteka as we delve into the complex relationships between humans and nature in the face of shifting climates and other global crises. We are thrilled to host debut author Claire Carroll in conversation with renowned author Daisy Hildyard for a compelling discussion that promises to challenge and inspire, in celebration of the publication of Claire’s debut collection, The Unreliable Nature Writer,

This event promises to be a thought-provoking dialogue on the intersection of literature, climate change, and our ongoing connection to the natural world. Whether you’re an avid reader, an environmental enthusiast, or someone concerned about the future of our planet, this conversation will offer valuable insights and spark meaningful discussions.

Join us at the bar from 6.30 pm for a prompt start at 6.45 pm

All books will be available to buy and sign on the night.

About the books:

The Unreliable Nature Writer is the eagerly-awaited debut collection of exhilarating, macabre and dreamy short stories from Claire Carroll. Shortlisted for The White Review Prize and winner of the Short Fiction Wild Writing Prize, Carroll portrays an unsettlingly hot, vaguely familiar world of humans facing the strain of intimate and global anxieties – trying to live alongside new technologies, failing environments and unknowable natural crises. Delightful to read and unsettling to imagine, these are haunting stories about love, loss, strangely exposing housing applications and cows.

Emergency is a novel about the dissolving boundaries between all life on Earth. Stuck at home alone under lockdown, a woman recounts her 1990s childhood in rural Yorkshire. She watches a kestrel hunting, helps a farmer with a renegade bull, and plays out with her best friend, Clare. Around her in the village, her neighbours are arguing, keeping secrets, caring for one another, trying to hold down jobs. In the woods and quarry there are foxcubs fighting, plants competing for space, ageing machines, and a three-legged deer who likes cake. These local phenomena interconnect and spread out from China to Nicaragua as pesticides circulate, money flows around the planet, and bodies feel the force of distant power. A story of remote violence and a work of praise for a persistently lively world, brilliantly written, surprising, evocative and unsettling, Daisy Hildyard’s Emergency reinvents the pastoral novel for the climate change era.

About the authors:

Claire Carroll lives in Somerset, UK, and writes experimental fiction about the intersection of nature, technology, and desire. She is also a PhD researcher at Bath Spa and Exeter Universities, where she explores how experimental writing – particularly short stories and prose-poetry – can reimagine how humans relate to the natural and non-human world.

Claire’s short stories and poetry have been published by journals including Gutter Magazine, perverse, Lunate Journal, The Oxonian Review, and Short Fiction Journal. In 2021, her short story My Brain is Boiling with Ideas was shortlisted for The White Review’s Short Story Prize, and her short story Cephalopod was the recipient of the Essex University & Short Fiction Journal Wild Writing Prize. Both pieces are taken from The Unreliable Nature Writer, Claire’s collection of linked short stories that examines the interconnection of climate anxiety, surviving late capitalism and dealing with personal loss.

Daisy Hildyard’s first novel, Hunters in the Snow, received the Somerset Maugham Award and a ‘5 under 35’ honorarium at the USA National Book Awards. Her essay The Second Body, a brilliantly lucid account of the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2017. She lives with her family in North Yorkshire, where she was born.

Location:

Hideaway / La Biblioteka

Kris Butler: Drink Maps in Victorian Britain
2024-05-31 19:00 - 20:00
At The Crow Inn, S3 7BS

“This is the story of drink maps, and it’s probably not what you think”

Join us at The Crow Inn – owners of Sheffield’s last remaining Victorian Drink Map – to hear Kris Butler, and a fascinating exploration of the history of alcohol in Victorian Britain via the ‘drink maps’ that were produced by the temperance movement to promote sobriety.

It’s not about pub crawls or plotted ale trails. Instead, these are maps with an agenda that was adamantly hostile to drinking alcohol, made by an organized faction known as the Temperance Movement. The logic at the time of the maps’ creation went as follows: if people are shown how many places there are to buy alcohol, they will be so appalled that they will join the effort to end drinking. In hindsight, this logic is obviously flawed.

Join us before the talk to enjoy a tap takeover from Attercliffe’s best brewery, St Mars of the Desert – friends of Kris’ from the States – who’ll be bringing four new brews.

Very limited capacity on this – book your free ticket now.

About the book:

What is a ‘drink map’? It may sound like a pub guide, yet it actually refers to a type of late nineteenth-century British map designed specifically to shock and shame people into drinking less.

This book explores how drink maps of particular cities were published in an attempt to fight increasingly rampant alcohol consumption, from Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield to Oxford, London and Norwich. Featuring red symbols to indicate where alcohol was sold, these special street maps were posted prominently in public places, submitted as evidence, sent to Members of Parliament and published in newspapers to show just how inebriated a neighbourhood could be. They promoted the message that having fewer places to buy alcohol was the answer to reducing widespread crime, poverty and sickness. And they worked – at first. After consulting a drink map in one town, judges decided to close half the licensed shops because even then no one had to walk more than two minutes to buy a beer.

Illustrated with original maps, advertisements and temperance propaganda, the story of their brief history is told amidst a tangle of licensing laws, rogue magistrates, irate brewers, ardent temperance organizers and accounts of the complex role alcohol played across all levels of Victorian society.

About the author:

Kris Butler is a lawyer, past president of the Boston Map Society and currently serves on the board of the Washington Map Society. She is also an award-winning home brewer and a contributor to MAP: Exploring the World (Phaidon). She has given numerous talks about drink maps, including at the International Conference on the History of Cartography in Amsterdam and at Harvard University in the US.

‘A brilliant, intoxicating book about the alliance of maps and the temperance movement in Victorian England. Butler has produced a powerful and beautifully illustrated account of the power of maps and the scale of addiction in nineteenth-century England, and in the process has identified a whole new cartographic genre.’ – Professor Jerry Brotton

Location:

The Crow Inn

The Island of Missing Trees - Sheffield Feminist Book Club
2024-05-22 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for an exciting in-person book club!

Get ready to dive into an evening discussing ‘The Island of Missing Trees‘ by Elif Shafak, share your thoughts on the book, and connect with likeminded individuals!

Whether you’re an avid reader or just starting your literary journey, this event is perfect for everyone. Immerse yourself in lively discussions, discover new genres, and expand your reading horizons.Don’t miss out on this opportunity to meet like-minded book enthusiasts and explore the fascinating world of literature. Mark your calendars and come join us for May’s Book Club!

About the book:It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows.

In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart.

Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. The only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.

The Island of Missing Trees1974, on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows. In ‘The Island of Missing Trees’, prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, memory and amnesia, human-induced destruction of nature, and, finally, renewal.
£9.99

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Politics and Organisation After the Protest Decade
2024-02-21 18:00 - 20:00
Politics and Organisation After the Protest Decade: Vincent Bevins and Rodrigo Nunes in Conversation

LOCATION: Lecture Theatre 6 (lower ground floor), The Diamond, 32 Leavygreave Rd, Sheffield S3 7RDWHEN: 6pm, Wednesday 21 February 2024 (with drinks reception from 7.30-8.30pm)From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. But we are not living in a world that is more just and democratic as a result. How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for? This is the question that Vincent Bevins, acclaimed journalist and author of The Jakarta Method, sets out to answer in his new book, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution (Headline, 2023). Bevins will be joined by Rodrigo Nunes, an academic and political theorist, who will discuss his own role in events in Brazil in this period, and his subsequent books addressing political organisation and contemporary Brazilian politics: Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A Theory of Political Organization (Verso, 2021) and Do Transe à Vertigem: Ensaios sobre Bolsonarismo e um Mundo em Transição (Ubu, 2022; forthcoming with Verso, 2025, under the title The View from Brazil).Bevins and Nunes will be in conversation with Molly Avery, Lecturer in the History of the Americas at the University of Sheffield and there will also be the opportunity for questions from the audience. The event will be followed by a drinks reception during which local bookshop La Biblioteka will be selling copies of both books.This event is co-sponsored by the History Department and the University of Sheffield History Society.

The Stirrings: A Memoir in Northern Time
2023-11-29 18:30 - 20:30 | Carpenter Room, Central Library, Surrey Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S1 1XZ, United Kingdom
This is a story about one young woman coming of age, and about the place and time that shaped her: Sheffield in the 1970s and 80s.

About the scorching summer of 1976 – the last Catherine Taylor would spend with both her parents in their home in Sheffield. About the Yorkshire Ripper, the serial killer whose haunting presence in Catherine’s childhood was matched only by the aching absence of her own father. About a country thrown into disarray by the nuclear threat and the Miners’ Strike, just as Catherine’s adolescent body was invaded by a debilitating illness. About 1989’s ‘Second Summer of Love’, a time of sexual awakening for Catherine, and the unforeseen consequences that followed it.

Copies of The Stirrings will be available to buy and have signed at the event.

The stirringsCatherine Taylor’s account of growing up in northern England in the 1970s and 80s shines a light on the particular history of a time and place – that ‘strange country of the North’ as George Orwell famously called it. Against this backdrop, and of music, the miners’ strike, fears of nuclear war, and economic downturn – all of which become a character of sorts in her writing, Catherine Taylor creates a series of very personal essays on subjects traditionally seen as taboo: parental estrangement, abortion, chronic illness, and how an obsession with the serial killer who stalked Yorkshire throughout her childhood became the inspiration for early feminism – all shot through with poetry, risk-taking and humour.
£16.99

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Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the poor, rich and famous’ Book Tour
2023-11-09 18:30 - 23:00 | Mondo Club, 7 Smithfield, Sheffield, S3 7AR, United Kingdom
We’re honoured to be supporting the Sheffield leg of @sportsbanger ‘Lifestyles of the poor, rich and famous’ book tour, on the 9th of Nov.

The book tells the story of the brand’s evolution from a bootlegging operation back in 2013, to an internationally renowned DIY fashion powerhouse and record label.

Daniel Dylan Wray will host a talk with the man behind Sports Banger, Jonny Banger. We’ve also invited some of Sheffield’s finest DJs to play the afters.

About the book:

The first Sports Banger retrospective, published to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the anarchic, genre-bending cult fashion house.

Sports Banger is a genre-defying, boundary-breaking fashion collective run by Jonny Banger, who interrogates British pop culture, fashion, class and politics through the subversion and (mis)appropriation of branding. Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the Poor, Rich and Famous tells the story of the first ten years of the irreverent brand, from its foundation in 2013 to the present day. It charts the rise of the brand from an underground bootlegging operation to an all-inclusive, internationally recognized DIY fashion house, record label and socially conscious satirist in the mould of a modern-day Hogarth.

In a layout created by the Sports Banger studio, the book’s images reflect the anarchic story: photographs of studio ephemera, couture pieces, community projects, protests and fashion shows feature alongside one-off pieces produced for Skepta, 2 Chainz, Samantha Morton, David Hoyle and more. The book contains a full t-shirt archive of iconic Sports Banger bootleg t-shirts. Reappropriated Nike, NHS and Adidas logos rub shoulders with images of defaced government letters, raves, food banks and official collaborations with Tommy Hilfiger and Slazenger. The book is an of-our-times hybrid of political comment, DIY fashion and proud class consciousness. Essays featured come from influential figures from the worlds of fashion, art and music, including Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, writer and curator Anastasiia Fedorova, and fashion writer and curator Nathalie Khan as well as voices of the general public and reviews from Vogue, Dazed and the V&A.

A to Z of TDR - Launch Party with The Designers Republic™ and Ian Anderson
2023-11-07 18:30 - 21:00 | Hideaway, 61 Eyre Lane, Sheffield, S1 3GF, United Kingdom
The Designers Republic™ bring it home! Join us to celebrate three decades of trail-blazing Sheffield graphic design studio with their new monograph ‘A to Z of The Designers Republic™’; the first book to tell the whole story of this hugely influential design agency.

Ian Anderson (founder of The Designers Republic⁠™) will be in conversation with Craig Oldham (designer, educator, Office of Craig Oldham). In addition the studio will be launching a new print (TBC) as well as launching the book and signing copies.

This is going to be a big one, upstairs at The Hideaway, and everyone is invited! A limited number of signed copies of the book will be available to purchase on the night, you can pre-order the book now to secure your copy (worldwide* shipping available).

About the book:

Led by founder and born rebel, Ian Anderson, The Designers Republic⁠™ has shaped graphic communication over the past thirty years through rule-defying music work, provocative self-initiated projects and a fierce commitment to conceptual thinking over style. Anderson explores the studio’s output, and its influence on a generation of graphic designers.

AZTDRTM spans over three decades of work – from the studio’s earliest designs for the FON label in the mid-1980s and sleeves for Age of Chance, Chakk and Cabaret Voltaire, right up to its recent projects for The Cinematic Orchestra, Led Bib and the Gulbenkian Foundation. Alongside classic self-initiated TDRTM projects, the 512-page book features an A to Z of everything from campaigns for Evolution Print, Coca-Cola and Nike, through to the studio’s celebrated designs for video games such as Wipeout and Formula Fusion.

The book includes 250 different album and single covers; 140 prints, posters and flyers; over 130 images of TDRTM print-based and editorial projects; 23 DR Angryman variants; five Coke bottles; four badges; one Swatch watch; a T-shirt, a mug and much, much more.

Spanning over three decades of work – from the studio’s earliest designs for the FON label in the mid-1980s and sleeves for Age of Chance, Chakk and Cabaret Voltaire, right up to its recent projects for The Cinematic Orchestra, Led Bib and the Gulbenkian Foundation – the book is a stunning design work in itself, featuring a Fluorescent yellow cover with foiled type, three special colour wrap, CMYK + one special colour throughout.

A to Z of The Designers Republic£65.00

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Brian Bilston
2023-10-11 19:00 - 21:30 | The Leadmill, 6 Leadmill Rd, Sheffield, S1 4SE, United Kingdom
Brian Bilston has been described as the Banksy of poetry and Twitter’s unofficial Poet Laureate; with over 200,000 followers on social media, Brian has become truly beloved by the online community.

His first collection of poetry, You Took the Last Bus Home, was published by Unbound. Diary of a Somebody (Picador) was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and the McKitterick Prize. Alexa, What Is There To Know About Love?, his last collection, was described by one reviewer as ‘the funniest collection of humorous verse I have seen in a long time’.

His poem ‘Refugees’ was set to music by Mark-Anthony Turnage for his 2019 song cycle of the same name, and Fifty Ways to Score a Goal, a collection of poems about football for children, was published in 2021.

Days Like These: An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems is his latest book and is out now in hardback, a brilliant collection of poems that will take the blues out of Monday, flatten the Wednesday hump and amplify that Friday feeling, from January throughto December.

Now Then - A Biography of Yorkshire by Rick Broadbent
2023-10-10 18:30 - 20:30 | La Biblioteka, Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S3 4HP, United Kingdom
Rick Broadbent, an award-winning author and exiled Yorkshireman, goes in search of the soul of England’s biggest county and produces an all-encompassing portrait of a place that has been victimised and stereotyped since the days of Williams the Conqueror. Incorporating social history, memoir, reportage and author interviews, Now Then paints a picture of what it means to be from Yorkshire – both now and back then.

The evening will be a talk followed by a Q&A session and then a book signing.

Written from the perspective of an exiled Yorkshireman this bestselling, award-winning author returns to his native county to discover and reveal its soul. We all know the tropes – Geoffrey Boycott incarnate, ferret-leggers and folk singers gambolling about Ilkley Moor without appropriate headgear – but why is Yorkshire God’s Own County? Exiled Yorkshireman Rick Broadbent sets out to find out whether Yorkshireness is something that can be summed up and whether it even matters in a shrinking world. Along the way he meets rock stars, ramblers and rhubarb growers as he searches for answers and a decent cup of tea.

Now Then is a biographical mosaic of a place that has been victimised and stereotyped since the days of William the Conqueror. Incorporating social history, memoir and author interviews, Now Then is not a hagiography. Broadbent visits the scenes of industrial neglect and forgotten tragedy, as well as examining the truth about well-known Yorkshire figures and institutions.

Featuring Kes, the Sheffield Outrages and the most controversial poem ever written, as well as a heroic dog, a lost albatross and a stuffed crocodile, Now Then is an affectionate but unsparing look at a county, its inhabitants and their flinty vowels. This is a funny, wise and searching account of a place that claims to have given the world its first football club and England its last witch-burning. It does include cobbles, trumpets and stiff-necked, wilful obstinacy, but it is also about ordinary Yorkshire and its extraordinary lives.

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The Dolphin by Susan Clegg
2023-07-01 18:30 - 20:00 | La Biblioteka, Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S3 4HP, United Kingdom
‘He knew that this was as close to the sea as he could ever get.’

Join us at La Biblioteka as we welcome local author Susan Clegg and feminist publisher Linen Press to celebrate the publication of The Dolphin.

In 1937 Larry Lambert has a vision of a magnificent pub built on frozen fields ‘like a grassy sea’. It is an echo of a single, failed, gay encounter in a fishing boat, and in its construction he invests his energy and his thwarted dreams. He calls it The Dolphin.

And so unfolds a moving exploration of the constraining expectations of society on three generations of one family. For Larry, there is the cruel impossibility of being gay in 1930s Britain and his ensuing loveless marriage with the embittered Rosemary. For his daughter, Joanie, there is the crushing weight of duty and respectability during the post-war years. Only granddaughter Lottie pulls free and finds the freedom her grandfather and mother were denied.

Larry’s decision to build The Dolphin sparks events that play out over decades, tearing one generation apart while bringing another back together.

With artfully simple prose, Susan Clegg invites you to look beyond the surface. Insightful, understated and finely observed.

See more about the book, and pre-order a signed & dedicated copy, click here:https://labiblioteka.co/product/the-dolphin/

Hello, Bookstore
2023-06-24 12:00 - 18:00 | Showroom Cinema, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX, United Kingdom
Join us and our bookselling colleagues from across the city – Juno Books, Rhyme & Reason, Space Centre – for a mini book fair in the Showroom Cinema Cafe, in celebration of their Special Screening of Hello, Bookstore (2022) dir. A. B. Yax, during this year’s Indie Bookshop Week.

The screening will be accompanied by a special Q&A with the star of the film Matthew Tannenbaum and director, A.B. Zax.

Please note the book fair is open to the public and free to attend, but you must purchase tickets to the screening directly from the Showroom Box Office. Please call or tap the button below.

Discovering Machine Knitting by Kandy Diamond
2023-06-03 16:00 - 18:00 | La Biblioteka, Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S3 4HP, United Kingdom
Join us as we welcome Kandy Diamond and her knitting machine for a live demo and hands-on mini-workshop to launch her new book Discovering Machine Knitting (The Crowood Press Ltd).

Come and try out machine knitting for yourself, and make yourself a knitted bookmark to take home!

This is the ultimate guide to machine knitting. This book has been designed to help you demystify machine knitting. Perfect for beginners, it starts with how the machine works and how stitches are formed, all the way through to shaping garment panels to your desired size and fit.

Each chapter focuses on different skills that build throughout the book, with lots of projects so you can put the skills into practice and make some knits for yourself. Designer Profiles at the end of each chapter showcase the work of professional machine knitters to provide context, inspiration and celebrate the huge potential for creativity in machine knitting. From troubleshooting and looking after the machine to using more advanced techniques such as intarsia and shaping, this book will help you fall in love with your knitting machine.

If you work through the step-by-step instructions and projects in this book, by the end of it you will be designing and knitting your own garments!

Readings of Protest. Charged - How the Police Try to Suppress Protest.
2022-10-18 20:00 - 22:00 | La Biblioteka, Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S3 4HP, United Kingdom
Come and hear protesters from across four decades give readings of what they fought for and how their protests were policed.

The UK government’s efforts to suppress dissent in the pursuit of power have given a green light to police to apply more aggressive tactics in managing crowds and protests. The results have provoked violence and even led to officers breaking the law.

The authors of Charged, Matt Foot and Morag Livingstone reveal that in 1983 a Tory home secretary secretly sanctioned police paramilitary powers, leading 40 years later to a Police Act which seeks to extinguish any effective protest.

Join activists and organisers from Sheffield and beyond who come together to share their experiences fighting for their jobs, the environment, education and against racism. Giving us insight into their experiences the activists will connect their own struggle to the policing of protest.

Including activists from:

Warrington Printers dispute 1983The Great Miners’ strike 1984/5 – Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC) / Women against Pit ClosuresThe Rotherham 12 who defended their community against racist thugsEnvironmental and global justice activistStudent activist / Disabled People Against Cuts.Chaired by local activist, Chris Peace.

Charged How the Police Try to Suppress Protest by Matt Foot and Morag Livingstone (Verso 2022)

“Brilliantly readable, it carries you with it every step of the way. One forgets how frightening authority is and the detail on police behaviour is dreadfully shocking and distressing. It never assumes what you might believe or what you might already know and at the end leaves the reader in no doubt as to what has happened in this country.”– Emma Thompson, actor and activist

“Meticulously details violent state suppression in the protection of capital; backed by a propaganda machine. Exposed is the unofficial but permanent government with sharp attention to every detail. This is a story of how justice has been repeatedly stolen in this ruthless war against the right to protest. Read every word because you are holding history in your hands. Our history.”– Lowkey, rapper and activist

“When you read Charged, you will see ours is one of many struggles, past and present.”– Chris Peace, Tribune

Books will be available on the night

Wild Child & Book of Birds with Dara McAnulty
2022-09-17 15:00 - 16:00 | La Biblioteka, Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S3 4HP, United Kingdom
On Saturday 17 th September at 2pm – Dara will be in conversation with Liz Ballard, Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, and afterwards signing copies of his books.

Dara and Liz will be talking about his new book A Wild Child’s Book of Birds, which is illustrated by Barry Falls, and is a gorgeous guide to birds in the UK which takes the reader through the year.🐦 advice he’d give to children who want to get involved in conservation but don’t knowwhere to start🐦 top tips on encouraging nature to thrive in your garden / window box🐦 which birds to look out for in and around Sheffield in the autumn 🐦 the cross generational appeal of his books – and why bird and nature watching areperfect activities to share with children and grandchildren🐦 Why Dara is passionate about nature and why he wants to encourage families totake notice of the environment and world around them – be it trees, flora, fauna orbirds.

More about A Wild Child’s Book of Birds:

Join brilliant young naturalist Dara McAnulty – author of Wild Child – on a journey through a year in the life of birds. Illustrated in full colour by award-winning artist Barry Falls.

This beautiful, informative book takes you through a year in the life of the birds you will find in Britain and Ireland and is divided into four sensational seasonal sections.Find out what birds do in each season, learn about birdsong, beaks, nests and eggs, the science of flight, migration, what to grow to attract different birds to your garden and what foods to put out on your bird table.

Discover different ways of recording what you see and about birds in literature. There are sections on birds of prey and corvids too.

The Summer Book - Celebrate 50 years with Sophia Jansson
2022-09-01 20:00 - 21:00 | Zoom
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Summer Book by Tove Jansson, we are delighted to present a live virtual event with Sophia Jansson, Tove’s niece, in conversation with Fleur Sinclair, owner of Sevenoaks Bookshop on 1 September 2022 at 7 PM. Digital access is included when you buy any of Tove Jansson’s adult works through Bookshop.org or our shop or website.

We hope you can join us!

Questions? Contact uk.support@bookshop.org

India Uniform Nine by Mark Perlstrom
2022-09-01 19:30 - 21:00 | La Biblioteka, Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S3 4HP, United Kingdom
Join us and Icon Books as we welcome Mark Perlstrom & Douglas Wight to the bookshop to launch this eye-opening account from inside an ultra-secret Customs unit.

Mark Perlstrom is no stranger to money laundering, drug smuggling and crooked firms. In the late 1980s he started working for HM Customs and was quickly thrown in the deep end, joining Operation C-Chase, an undercover investigation that penetrated Pablo Escobar’s mighty Medellin cartel, brought down the corrupt BCCI bank and stopped London’s gangs from moving their ill-gotten gains around the capital. As part of the Uniforms – the new, secret, anti-money-laundering squad – high-speed car chases, bugging homes and spying on targets was day-to-day business.

Told by a true insider and revealing never-before-told-secrets of the industry, India Uniform Nine lays bare the intense rivalry between crime-fighting organisations and how that leads to corruption, chaos and some scarcely believable antics in the covert world. And how Mark’s own operation was nearly scuppered by a US Customs bungle.

See more about the book, and pick up a copy, in the shop or here: https://labiblioteka.co/product/india-uniform-nine/

Consumed - Q&A with Aja Barber
2022-06-23 19:00 - 19:30 | Instagram Live
As part of our Independent Bookshop Week celebrations, La Biblioteka is delighted to be hosting an online sit-down between Hannah Wilson of My Indie Wardrobe and Aja Barber, discussing her book Consumed: The need for Collective Change; Colonialism, Climate Change & Consumerism.

From the embedded injustice at the heart of the things we buy, and how and why we passively accept them, to how we can become an active agent of change through our purchasing power and self-awareness, Aja’s book positively enforces compassionate individual agency as the root of global systemic change.

If you’d like to ask Aja a question, get in touch via Instagram before or during the live event.

About Consumed:

Aja Barber wants change. In the ‘learning’ first half of the book, she will expose you to the endemic injustices in our consumer industries and the uncomfortable history of the textile industry; one which brokered slavery, racism and today’s wealth inequality.

And how these oppressive systems have bled into the fashion industry and its lack of diversity and equality. She will also reveal how we spend our money and whose pockets it goes into and whose it doesn’t (clue: the people who do the actual work) and will tell her story of how she came to learn the truth.

In the second ‘unlearning’ half of the book, she will help you to understand the uncomfortable truth behind why you consume the way you do.

She asks you to confront the sense of lack you have, the feeling that you are never quite enough and the reasons why you fill the aching void with consumption rather than compassion. And she makes you challenge this power disparity, and take back ownership of it. The less you buy into the consumer culture the more power you have.

Consumed will teach you how to be a citizen, not a consumer.

This event will be recorded and shared across our social platforms after the event, as far as rights allow.

My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay
2022-06-18 20:00 - 22:30 | Montgomery Theatre, 27 Surrey Street, England, S1 2LGUnited Kingdom (map), Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S1 2LG, United Kingdom
Part historical, part political but most of all – hugely inspirational.

Acclaimed British author Lemn Sissay OBE – a BAFTA-nominated, International prize-winning writer, poet, playwright and broadcaster – will keep the audience enthralled with this scoop of an event for Sheffield and Migration Matters Festival.

He will share his rollercoaster life story and read powerful extracts from his Sunday Times best-selling memoir, My Name is Why.

The book reflects on his childhood in care, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so, exploring the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home.

This event will also feature a set by Sarah Orola

The Land of Many Waters flows through me. My words transcend boundaries and give voice to a nation. Born in Ireland to parents of Nigerian and Guyanese descent has given me a beautiful yet complex insight into my diverse world.My journey of self-awareness is heavily reflected in my poetry. Scribbling my thoughts on paper and bringing those words alive has helped me explore my afro-caribbean identity to share with others.

The Gamekeeper (screening + intro)
2022-05-25 19:30 - 21:30 | Showroom Cinema, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX, United Kingdom
Join The Showroom and And Other Stories for an evening celebrating the influential South Yorkshire-born novelist and screenwriter, Barry Hines, and the reissue of his masterpiece of nature writing and rural class conflict, The Gamekeeper.

Born into a mining family in a village near Barnsley, Barry Hines (1939-2016) worked first in a coal mine before going to college, working as a teacher, and then becoming a full-time writer of fiction and screenplays for film and television. Hines is best known for A Kestrel for a Knave, a novel that has never been out of print in Britain and was filmed by Ken Loach as the widely acclaimed Kes. For over forty years he documented working-class lives with a boundless humanity, deep empathy, and ultimately, hope.

Sheffield-based publisher AOS are proud to be reissuing a selection of Hines’ novels over the coming years, including classics, lesser-known gems and until-now undiscovered work. This April, AOS published The Gamekeeper, Hines’ gripping novel of rural working-class life through the changing seasons, seen through the eyes of a gamekeeper on a country estate in the North of England. To mark its publication, join us for a screening of the rarely-seen film adaptation of The Gamekeeperhttps://labiblioteka.co/product/the-gamekeeper/, adapted by Hines and directed by Ken Loach. There will also be a series of short talks on Barry Hines’ work and legacy from those that he influenced and that knew and worked with him.

There will be an introduction before this screening.

David Forrest is Professor of Film and Television and Studies at the University of Sheffield. His most recent book is New Realism: Contemporary British Cinema (2020), and with Sue Vice he is the co-author of Barry Hines: Kes, Threads and Beyond (2017).

Ron Roseis a playwright and scriptwriter, born in Sheffield and lives in Doncaster. He’s had over 70 plays performed professionally at theatres across the country including two verbatim dramas set in the ’84/’85 Miners’ Strike Never the Same Again and The Enemy Within; the WW2 mining strikes drama Bread and Roses; and the much-performed Ladies Darts drama Double Top. He’s written television scripts for Between the Lines, The Bill, Heartbeat, the political series Love and Reason, and many others.

Sue Vice is Professor of English Literature at the University of Sheffield where she teaches contemporary literature, film and Holocaust studies. Her publications include the BFI Modern Film Classics volume on Shoah (2011), Textual Deceptions: Literary Hoaxes and False Memoirs in the Contemporary Era (2014), the co-edited volume Representing Perpetrators in Holocaust Literature and Film (2013) with Jenni Adams, and Barry Hines: ‘Kes’, ‘Threads’ and Beyond, with David Forrest (2017). Her latest book is Claude Lanzmann’s ‘Shoah’ Outtakes: Holocaust Rescue and Resistance (2021).

Tickets via https://www.showroomworkstation.org.uk/the-gamekeeper-intro

John Grindrod – Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain
2022-04-28 07:30 - 21:00 | Kommune, Angel Street, Sheffield, S8 9QB, United Kingdom
John Grindrod – Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain

We’re very happy to be welcoming John Grindrod back to Sheffield, in celebration of his fascinating new book, Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain. Sheffield’s relatively small features – here today, gone tomorrow Centre for Popular Music and the drawn-out renovation of Park Hill – might reflect the city’s red wall hegemony against decades of neo-liberalism, but the rest of the book offers lessons about what may be just around the corner – for better or worse – in South Yorkshire.

About Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain:

Wimpey homes. Millennium monuments. Riverside flats. Wind farms. Spectacular skyscrapers. City centre apartments. Out of town malls.

The buildings designed in our lifetimes encapsulate the dreams and aspirations of our culture, while also revealing the sobering realities. Whether modest or monumental, they offer a living history of Britain, a reminder of the forces that have shaped our modern landscape.

Iconicon is an enthralling journey around the Britain we have created since 1980: the horrors and delights, the triumphs and failures. From space-age tower blocks to suburban business parks, and from postmodernist exuberance to Passivhaus eco-efficiency, this is at once a revelatory architectural grand tour and an endlessly witty and engaging piece of social history.

John Grindrod is the author of Concretopia: A Journey Around the Rebuilding of Postwar Britain (Old Street, 2013) and Outskirts: Living Life on the Edge of the Green Belt (Sceptre, 2017), which was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize.

We are planning for this event to take place in the Kommune Events Room with an in-person audience, as well as a live stream for attendees watching from home. On the night of the event, our team will be wearing masks and we encourage you to do the same, unless you are exempt. This will keep things as safe as possible for authors, audience members and our booksellers.

In-person Audience: you can purchase a signed – and if requested, dedicated – copy of Iconicon OR a £5 Voucher.

Livestream: you can purchase a signed – and if requested, dedicated – copy of Iconicon, OR a £3 Voucher.

Copies will be available on the night and John will be available to sign your copy too.

Please note that vouchers can be used on any item in the bookshop and on our website. Please consider supporting the bookshop by purchasing a book or voucher.

John Grindrod – Iconicon: A Journey Around the Landmark Buildings of Contemporary Britain

£3.00 – £20.00Price range: £3.00 through £20.00

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Writing on the Wall
2022-04-14 11:00 - 2022-04-15 18:00 | La Biblioteka, Leah's Yard, Cambridge Street, Sheffield, S3 4HP, United Kingdom
See work from Sheffield Hallam University BA Graphic Design students, produced in partnership with Writing on the Wall festival. See the final book covers and page spreads for three children’s books, as well as process work of each.

The work showcases a wonderful combination of illustration, print and digital techniques.

To see the full range of work visit us on Thursday 14th April between 10am and 4pm!
