Free time

Pippa Hennessy, part-time worker at Five Leaves, should really be using her time off to think about her next Five Leaves' project, faithfully memorising the content of books from our back catalogue and voluntarily polishing the Chairman of the Board's Roller. She does, however, have a literary life of her own. In that guise she has two interesting events coming up, both connected with the Nottingham University School of Education's Creative and Professional Writing Degree. The first of these is on 24th May where The National Academy of Writing hits town. Among the activities that day are a talk by the travel writer Ian Marchant (very popular at Lowdham Book Festival two or three years back) and two students having their work publicly analysed by the novelist Richard Beard, in front of the audience. Let's hope it's Pippa who gets chosen. The afternoon's events are free, see http://naw-nottingham.eventbrite.com. The other event, which clashes with a Five Leaves' reading by Danuta Reah and Stephen Booth in Sheffield (note to self, give staff a lecture on diary management) is the launch of the Creative Writing course/Fine Art student anthology, Out of the Fire - free, refreshments provided, 6.30pm at the Colin Campbell Building at Nottingham University on Wednesday 8th June. Pippa edited the first such anthology last year, while this year's editor is Grant Kent. All welcome.

In Pippa's campaign to become the best connected local writer she has also become secretary of Nottingham Poetry Society.