Literature in Leeds: Prose, Poetry and Plays

A community display celebrating Leeds writers, from historical fiction to thought-provoking poetry, and plays written for stage and screen. Featuring objects which have inspired the authors, and exploring some of the independent bookshops in the city and surrounding areas.

Bringing together loans from writers, from notebooks and word processors to items that have inspired them, to writing implements from our own collections, and objects related to themes in their works.

Contributors include historical crime fiction author Chris Nickson, whose books focus on Leeds history from the 17th to 19th centuries, and poet Clare Wigzell who draws on Kirkstall Abbey and its depictions by Romantic artists such as Turner. Khadijah Ibrahiim has loaned items reflecting her writing process and output, from laptops to ipods, from minidiscs to flyers for events like Rootz Runnin and Leeds Young Authors poetry slams. We also feature writer of short stories SJ Bradley, some of whose work will be represented by a Stone Chat from our collections. Writer and performer, Becky Cherriman, whose work touches on themes such as women’s history and industrial working conditions, novelist Jennifer Saint, who looks at Ancient Greece and the lives of ordinary women in those times. Screenwriter Lisa Holdsworth is featured, while we also pay tribute to the greats of living memory such as playwright and author Alan Bennett.