Juxtabook

York National Book Fair 2024

Not long to wait now! In its 50th year the PBFA book sellers are exhibiting again at York Racecourse  on 13th/14th September.

 

 

One of the largest book fairs in Europe, this two day fair sees over 150 book dealers from the UK and beyond exhibting a huge variety of books, maps, prints and ephema at the Knavesmire Suite, York Racecourse. For more details and a complimentary ticket see https://www.pbfa.org/fairs/york-national-book-fair-september-2024 or https://yorkbookfair.com/

 

 

13th September 2024, 12:00 - 19:00

14th September 2024, 10:00 - 17:00

The Knavesmire Suite, York Racecourse, York, YO23 1EX

Plenty of parking, free shuttle bus from the train station. Cafe.

 

 

Harrogate Book Fair, Christa Ackroyd and The Brontë Birthplace Campaign

 

The PBFA Harrogate Premier Book Fair Team are thrilled and delighted to confirm that journalist and TV presenter Christa Ackroyd from the newly formed community benefit society, The Bronte Birthplace, has kindly agreed to open the Harrogate Fair, in this the 50th anniversary year of the PBFA.

The birth house of the Brontes is in Thornton, on the outskirts of Bradford so, with the strong local association in terms of being close by and linked to our collective interest in books, the newly created society will also be present as a guest exhibitor throughout the fair to better explain the background intentions that the society is seeking to attain. In effect they will re-open the birth house as an inspirational hub for disadvantaged youngsters.

The birthplace will be open in time for Bradford to celebrate being City of Culture in 2025 and the birthplace is one of the recipients of grants to celebrate the city's past while looking towards the future.

Christa writes, "When I was 10 having been adopted I needed some inspiration as to where I was going in life." Her adoptive father took her to visit the Haworth Parsonage with the message that the Brontes who grew up there and became famous were born under similar humble beginnings on the outskirts of Bradford to Christa, but anything is possible when you work for it.

As a footnote Christa also told our fair manager that Charlotte Bronte had the first recognized female pre-nuptial agreement in Britain whereby she left the royalties from her works in trust for her father, who died 7 years after she did.

The Brontë Birthplace Campaign have raised enough money to have made a successful offer on the house. They are now raising funds to restore and run the property. They need another £355,000 to renovate and open to public for Bradford 2025 City of Culture and are crowdfunding here.

As well as finding our more about the Bronte Birthplace, visitors to the fair will be able to browse the books of over 30 booksellers across the two rooms of the fair. There will be plenty of Bronte books as well books in all subjects, at all prices from modern first editions to antiquarian, fiction to non-fiction, as well prints, maps and ephemera.

Harrogate Book Fair 

15th March 2024, 12:00 - 18:00
16th March 2024, 10:00 - 16:00

VENUE
Derwent & Calder Rooms, Pavilions of Harrogate, Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG2 8NZ. £2 on the door or visit the website for a complementary ticket.

 

 

The books pictured are all from my stock and will be with me at CL Hawley's stand on the 15th and 16th March at Harrogate Book Fair.

 

Bay of Ghosts by Rob Hawley

 

 

As those of you who get our regular newsletter will know my husband Rob has what they used to call a 'slim volume' out. Bay of Ghosts by Rob Hawley is the second of Bradford based Graft Poetry's new series of poetry pamphlets.

It is very hard when you are interested in landscape to write about the north of England after Ted Hughes, and it is hard to write about growing up in the north of England post Simon Armitage, and yet I am proud that Rob has found a way though this and writes about scenes from Yorkshire and Lancashire, past and present, in his own voice. Even with a wife's prejudice I can see Bay of Ghosts does not particularly innovate, but that allows theme and subject to rise above form in a very readable way. Interestingly the northern poet it reminds me most of is actually Andrew Marvell, with dialogues, and personification, and dealing with matters ecological as much as theological, historiographical as well as as metaphysical, the slight echo is there.

I've heard Tom Paulin use the phrase, 'white Gothic', and I think such intense shocks of white and light, form part of the charm of Bay of Ghosts, from the white wraiths of the past to the repeated glimmers of water and flickers of fire and candles. Snapshots appear, drawing heavily on mindfulness, but the whole reaches repeatedly back into the past and constantly pushes at ideas of the future, keeping, at the back of the reader's mind, a conceit of the ebb and flow of time beyond the fashionable idea of the 'moment'.

As to subject matter, there are poems here on Morecambe Bay and the Yorkshire Dales, on Maria and Elizabeth Bronte, on books and collecting, on teaching and reading to children, on a death his grandmother witnessed as a young married woman (the deceased is a husband named only in relation to his wife; a sort of reverse second Mrs de Winter), on trees, on John Clare, and more. Overall, it is a thoughtful and entertaining 28 pages and I am delighted Graft Poetry were keen to publish it.

Should any of that pique your interest, copies of Bay of Ghosts are available in my online shop and at book fairs. £4 plus postage. If you require a signed copy that is easily arranged.

Finally, I should add that the haunting photograph of Morecambe Bay that illustrates the cover is by the wonderful Joe Nash.