La Biblioteka

The Summer Book - Celebrate 50 years with Sophia Jansson
2022-09-01 20:00 - 21:00 (Europe/London) | 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!
