Sheffield Independent Publishers' Book Fair

Do drop by our stall if you are near Sheffield on 3rd November. There are also readings from our writers John Lucas, David Belbin and Danuta Reah while Liz Cashdan is taking part in a panel discussion. Not that we're trying to take over or anything.

What the papers say

Time for a round up of some recent press Five Leaves press coverage... The Thomas Hardy Society gives some nice coverage to our CD of C. Day-Lewis poems read by Jill Balcon. Both were vice-presidents of the Society. Indeed, both CDL and Jill are buried in Stinsford churchyard as is Hardy. Jill read the poems of both her late husband and Hardy at meetings of the Society and CDL read at the first Thomas Hardy Festival in 1968. Danuta Reah is picking up some coverage online for her Not Safe, the latest being at www.overmydeadbody.com/notsafe.htm. Her crime novella is based round the Sheffield refugee community, while David Belbin (who edited the book) has been interviewed in the Nottingham Post about his Five Leaves' refugee book Secret Gardens. You can read the interview at http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Contemporary-tale-kids-run-tackles-reluctance/story-13185924-detail/story.html. The North issue 47 includes reviews of both the John Lucas' books we published last year as well as a rare review of our Hull anthology, Old City, New Rumours. Several other occasional Five Leaves' writers appear in that issue but it is worth seeking out (from www.inpressbooks.co.uk) for the articles on "reflections on 25 years of poetry" by some movers and shakers and, especially, Jeremy Pointing on 25 years of Peepal Tree press. Our book that is getting most coverage at the moment though is Roman Nottinghamshire, with a lot more to come. This is also our best selling book too, with its own dedicated website on http://romannottinghamshire.wordpress.com/. Naturally, the best headline is found in LeftLion, which has an interview with the author Mark Patterson announced as "Venneh, viddeh, vicceh", translated as "I came, I saw, I went shopping". LeftLion also includes a piece from Five Leaves' worker Pippa Hennessy about her first year at Five Leaves Towers which includes: "You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve learned about working class life in Stratford (London), Butlins in the 1950s, being Jewish in Glasgow during and after World War I, the life and times of Ray Gosling, and sodding fairies..." http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/the-five-leaves-diary/id/3864

Where would we be without amoebas?

Derbyshire Readers Day - mentioned earlier as drawing its speakers only from small independent presses - was a great success, at least as far as this indie is concerned. Six of the speakers, Berlie Doherty, Stephen Booth, Dan Tunstall, Maxine Linnell, Danuta Reah and Charlie Williams are all associated with Five Leaves, though we are not their sole publisher in four cases but on this day they were all in our orbit. I was also pleased to chair a publishers' panel with the editors of Smith/Doorstep, Templar, Shoestring and Route, and to attend a lecture by one of the editors of Peepal Tree on the Caribbean history that forms the backdrop to Caribbean writing. I hope Jeremy Poynting repeats this talk elsewhere. It will certainly soon appear on Peepal Tree's website. Quote of the day was from Danuta Reah who mentioned that she had some dealings once with a computer shop where the owner, "would have been a serial killer had he not gone into computing". Malcolm Burgess also raised a laugh when he reported that I'd [accidentally] described Five Leaves as a "micro press" which made him think that his Oxygen Press must be an "amoeba press".

Thanks and congratulations to Derbyshire Libraries for taking the risk of devoting their whole annual event to the groundlings.

Crime Express relaunch

Here they are then, normal size (as opposed to the A6 flapped size of the earlier books, which authors loved and bookshops did not), with great covers. Each book is £4.99 and is a novella. Great covers for the relaunch by Gavin Morris. The books will be available via the trade sometime late March but can be supplied post free UK from here, now: http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/crime_express_p0195.aspx. There's more info on them there too