Saturday 28 September 2013

Five Leaves is opening a bookshop in Nottingham!

Press Release: immediate
New independent bookshop to open in Nottingham

The Nottingham-based publisher, Five Leaves is to open a bookshop in Nottingham, the first independent bookshop in the city since 2000.

The bookshop will open in mid-November at 14a Long Row, opposite the Tourist Information Centre, in premises that have been used as an art gallery and a café and will trade under the name Five Leaves Bookshop.

Ross Bradshaw, owner of Five Leaves, said “When I came to Nottingham in the late 70s there were several independent bookshops and in subsequent years various chains were represented, but for many years there has only been Waterstones in the city centre. It's a great shop but there's plenty room for an independent as well.”

The new bookshop will specialise in history, politics and landscape; fiction and poetry; lesbian and gay books; and international writing, with an emphasis on independent publishers

Ross Bradshaw added “Nottinghamshire has a flourishing literature scene, with more professional writers than ever and a very active events programme including the longstanding Lowdham Book Festival which I've been involved with since the start. The bookshop will provide another focus and we will work with local and national writers to build the shop's own programme. The premises became available suddenly and we are working hard to open by mid-November. Several of our own writers and other local publishers are pitching in to help.”

Initial events will include a memorial evening for the Nobel Literature Prize winner Seamus Heaney and a speaker from the peace movement in Israel.

One of Nottingham's leading writers, Jon McGregor, said “I'm hugely excited at the prospect of a new independent bookshop in Nottingham. Despite the impact of online retailing, there is still a place for the personalised experience of a well-run independent bookshop; not just as a place to buy a book, but as the hub for a community of readers and writers. Ross Bradshaw has many years of experience in publishing and bookselling, and I'm sure will make a fine job of it; I'm equally sure that Nottingham's thriving community of writers and readers will support the venture from day one."

The Five Leaves Bookshop will complement other local independents including The Bookcase in Lowdham and the graphic novel specialists Page 45 in Nottingham city centre.

For further information please contact Ross Bradshaw, info@fiveleaves.co.uk, 0115 9895465 (w) 0115 9693597 (h).

Background
Ross Bradshaw worked at Mushroom Bookshop in Nottingham from 1979-1995 (the shop closed in 2000) and since then has run Five Leaves Publications, initially part-time while working as Nottinghamshire County Council's literature office, then full time. He is a trustee of the East Midlands Book Award and the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. Five Leaves jointly runs the Lowdham Book Festival with The Bookcase in Lowdham, the biggest book festival in the region. Together with Housmans Bookshop in London, Five Leaves established the London Radical Book Fair in 2012.

Five Leaves Publications forthcoming books include a collection of essays on Crime, a biography of the architectural writer Ian Nairn and A Brief History of Whistling by Nottingham writers John Lucas and Allan Chatburn.

Five Leaves Bookshop will be linked to the social enterprise Howie-Smith Project, which supports small creative enterprises in Nottingham.
The Five Leaves Bookshop will open for trading on 9th November, but there will be a grand opening on 16th November with events in the shop all day.

ENDS

16 comments:

Nottinghamshirenotes said...

Excellent news! What a brilliant development for Nottingham

Ross Bradshaw said...

Thanks, Janet. Interesting thing... 517 people have read the blog entry on here (others elsewhere) and you are the only person to have commented. But masses of the people who have read it have commented on Twitter and on Facebook. What does that all mean??

Anne McD said...

Congratulations! Wishing you and the bookshop all the best!

charles said...

Ross, perhaps people think comments on a blog are somehow more formal than comments on Facebook & Twitter. They hang around longer. So if they simply want to say congrats or good luck or the like, they'll post on those other places. Meanwhile, congratulations. Good luck.

Ross Bradshaw said...

Thanks Anne, Pam and Charles - who is probably right (as he usually is).

Rosemary said...

This is brilliant news. Can't wait to frequent the new place (when I should be writing my thesis, most likely).

David Belbin said...

Commenting on blogs has been way down for years, Ross (unless they're part of newspaper websites, anyway) & it's far more useful to you to have people spread stuff on social media, rather than just talk to themselves here. But since you wanted comments, here's one. Good luck! You know you're going to need it...

Ross Bradshaw said...

Thanks, folks, and David you are right of course. I read less blogs I used to and comment only rarely. Re luck, you are not wrong there either.

chillcat said...

Best of luck with this. I just went to a Women's Fiction Festival in southern Italy where (nearly) all the American bigwigs talked about 'the death of the bookshop' as though it is something we have to swallow. Finally one of them spoke differently - about the warmth of an independent bookshop, the act of choosing a book. I felt a warm ahhh rise in the air - it was a room full of authors! Best, cat

pd anderson said...

This is fantastic news for the city! We all need to spread the word and help make it a success.

Anonymous said...

We need to support independent bookshops and boycott Amazon: Amazon see trade union representation as illegitimate.http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/05/business/workers-of-amazon-divergent.html

IParrot Post said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Hope's Tale said...

Nice positive news for Nottingham. Shared it on Twitter for you so hopefully helping spread the word.

Ross Bradshaw said...

Thanks for everyone's comments, twitter links etc!

Rod Warner said...

Good luck with the venture... shall be hopping the 9 from Loughborough over to check it out sometime soon...

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