‘STRIKE’, published by Stairwell Books in January 2024, is the latest book by award-winning Leeds/Doncaster poet Sarah Wimbush. It is an exploration of both famous and previously unseen photographs of the 1984 miners’ strike, through the lens of poetry.

2024 is the 40th anniversary of the start of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike, one of the longest industrial disputes in British history. In conversation with poet Joe Williams, himself born in the north east colliery town Ashington, Sarah will discuss the process of writing the book and her personal experiences of the strike.

Join Leeds-based author Sarah Brooks as she talks about and reads from her stunning debut novel The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands. Read more here.

It is the end of the Nineteenth Century, and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow.

An unmissable reading from two Leeds-based poets with debut collections from the mighty Peepal Tree Press. 

Emily Zobel Marshall’s Bath of Herbs explores the complexity of mixed-race, hybrid identities and relationships to the English and Welsh mountains, fells, rivers and shorelines from an ‘othered’, unmappable, positionality. 

Adam Lowe’s Patterflash is a PBS Recommendation, receiving acclaim from The Big Issue and featuring on BBC radio. Find them at peepaltreepress.com

Dietrich, Lemper, La Voix…The cabaret has given rise to some of the most boundary- pushing female performers of the 20th & 21st Centuries. Yet the songwriters that get remembered remain staunchly male. No more, we say!

Amy J Payne, Anna Pool and Oliver Rundell invite you to a relaxed and intimate cabaret of words and music from a dazzling array of female songwriters. Expect riotous laughter, quiet reflection, and plenty of joyful surprises as we journey from Piaf to protest song to…penguins?

Museum Bums takes a cheeky look at butts in art and this will be a fun afternoon for those interested in history, art and peaches of the past!

This free Queer History Club event will take place at Leeds City Museum where you can join a talk with book signing.

Jack Shoulder and Mark Small – co-authors of Museum Bums – will use bums in the collections to explore some of the themes covered in the book, with their book chapters "They're Just Good Friends!", "When is a Bum not a Bum?" and "All Women Are Venus(?)" as jumping off points.

Rob Henderson was born to a drug-addicted mother and a father he never met – and grew up in ten different foster homes in California. When he is finally adopted into a loving family, he is hopeful that life will finally be stable and safe. 

But divorce, tragedy, poverty, and violence mark his adolescence, and Henderson enters the military upon completing high school. 

UK general practice has reached crisis point. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has placed a strain on an already crumbling primary care service, leaving both patients and NHS staff struggling. Seventy-five years after the NHS was created, Dr Ellen Welch lifts the curtain on general practice. She looks back on the history of the profession exploring how the job has changed – particularly since the pandemic – then ahead to what the future of general practice might look like.

The Johnson era will be remembered for a series of scandals that severely eroded trust in the British government. 

From questionable PPE tenders and public appointments to the ‘partygate’ fiasco, every aspect of public life seemed tainted. 

How did this downward spiral begin, and what can be done to reverse it?

Monique Charlesworth’s mother Inge was German, half-Jewish and a Holocaust survivor, all of which she chose to deny. Talented and able, charismatic and infuriating, she surged through life constantly reinventing herself. Sent out of Nazi Germany, she eventually arrived in London and a new start until her past caught up with her.

AJ Close’s novel What Doesn’t Kill Us combines the tension of a police procedural with the power and passion of the women’s lib movement. 

Based on true events, including the 13 Yorkshire Ripper murders and a feminist arson campaign against porn outlets in Leeds, the novel also speaks to today’s conversations about the police and their failure to protect women.