October
Saturday 30th Oct – 2pm
Join nature writer and conservationist Laurence Rose and poet Steve Ely for a unique combined event looking at how direct observations of nature find their way onto the page whether as prose or poetry. The event will be a mixture of talk, readings and Q&A.
Laurence Rose is a leading wildlife conservationist and author who has worked in more than twenty countries to save species from extinction and defend the most important places for wildlife. After more than three decades in mainstream conservation he is using his writing to challenge government, society and the conservation sector itself to adopt a more radical, urgent approach. His books The Long Spring (published in 2018), Framing Nature – conservation and culture (October 2020) and Leopard Moon Rising – distant views of India, (June 2021) all explore the relationship between people and the rest of nature through a cultural lens.
Steve Ely has published several collections of poetry, including Oswald’s Book of Hours, Englaland, Incendium Amoris and Zi-Zi Taah Taah Taah: The Song of the Willow Tit. His books have won or been nominated for several literary prizes, including the Forward Prize for best first collection, the Ted Hughes Award and the Northern Writers Award for poetry. His most recent books of poems are Lectio Violant and The European Eel, both published in the summer of 2021. Steve Ely is senior lecturer in creative writing at the University of Huddersfield, where he is Director of the Ted Hughes Network. His monograph, Ted Hughes’s South Yorkshire: Made in Mexborough, is a biographical work that explores Hughes’s Yorkshire formation.
Tickets are free from here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/field-notes-observations-of-nature-tickets-170522276720
School events – email us to find out more
Emily Gravett
Amy Wilson
Nick Sharratt
November
Wednesday 10th Nov – 7.30 at The Picturedrome Holmfirth
The Picturedrome in association with Read present “Escape from the Ghetto” by Holmfirth’s very own John Carr. Join us for John’s book launch, reading, Q&A and signing.
The captivating true story of one boy’s flight across Europe to escape the Nazis. A tale of extraordinary courage, incredible adventure, and the relentless pursuit of life in the face of impossible challenges.
In early 1940 Chaim Herszman was locked in to the Lódz Ghetto in Poland. Hungry, fearless and determined, he goes on scavenging missions outside the wire limits, until he is forced to kill a Nazi guard. That moment changes the course of his life, and sets him on an unbelievable adventure across enemy lines.
Chaim avoids grenade and rifle fire on the Russian border, shelters with a German family in the Rhineland, falls in love in occupied France, is captured on a mountain pass in Spain, gets interrogated as a potential Nazi spy in Britain, and eventually fights for everything he believes in as part of the British Army. He protects his life by posing as an Aryan boy with a crucifix around his neck, and fights for his life through terrible and astonishing circumstances.
Escape from the Ghetto is about a normal boy who faced extermination by the Nazis in the ghetto or a Nazi deathcamp, and the extraordinary life he led in avoiding that fate. It’s a bittersweet story about epic hope, beauty amidst horror, and the triumph of the human spirit.
John Carr is Henry Carr’s eldest son, and in Escape From the Ghetto he has recreated his father’s incredible adventure, through recordings and transcribed conversations in later life.
This is a rare opportunity – free admission but tickets are required!
To book tickets please click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/escape-from-the-ghetto-an-evening-with-john-carr-tickets-194643934247
Saturday 13th Nov – 2pm
Comedian Robin Ince quickly abandoned science at school, bored by a fog of dull lessons and intimidated by the barrage of equations. But, twenty years later, he fell in love and he now presents one of the world’s most popular science podcasts. Every year he meets hundreds of the world’s greatest thinkers.
In this erudite and witty book, Robin reveals why scientific wonder isn’t just for the professionals. Filled with interviews featuring astronauts, comedians, teachers, quantum physicists, neuroscientists and more – as well as charting Robin’s own journey with science – The Importance of Being Interested explores why many wrongly think of the discipline as distant and difficult. From the glorious appeal of the stars above to why scientific curiosity can encourage much needed intellectual humility, this optimistic and profound book will leave you filled with a thirst for intellectual adventure.
To book tickets please click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/167946385159
Saturday 20th Nov – 2pm
Set on the outskirts of Bradford over the course of a single day, Killing The Horses follows Ryan and Liam, teenagers skiving off school in the woods at the edge of the city. But the woods hold secrets. Dark secrets. And the landscape aches with the violence of all that has been done there.
There is blood on the ground and a sickness in the earth. As the memory of what has happened there climbs back out of the hillside, the boys learn that they are too entangled in the savagery of the land around them to be able to separate themselves from it.
Killing The Horses is rooted in the landscape and dialect of West Yorkshire and fuses realism with the mythical. It brings the macabre and darkly-religious world of the American Southern Gothic to the north of England. The short story version of Killing The Horses was longlisted in the 2018 Manchester Fiction Prize run by Carol-Ann Duffy. His other writing credits include fiction publication in the Fortnightly Review, winning a Dorothy Rosenberg Prize for ‘young poets of unusual promise’ from the University of Berkeley, and the Grist first-place prize for poetry describing place, from the University of Huddersfield. He has performed at numerous literary festivals around Yorkshire including the Ted Hughes Festival, the York Takeover Festival, the Leeds Lit Festival and the Bradford Literature Festival. John is also a teacher of A Level English Literature and Language.
John will read extracts from his book and talk about his writing and join Louise and James for a Q&A. Including free refreshments.
To book tickets please click here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/john-newsham-killing-the-horses-book-launch-tickets-170519973832
School events – email us to find out more
John Patrick Green
Steve Camden
Cat Weldon
And more to be confirmed!