Come along and hear the inside story of the  BBC National Short Story Award with the 2017 judge and author Jon McGregor, winner of this year’s National Short Story Prize, Welsh novelist and TV scriptwriter, Cynan Jones, and special guests. Cynan was presented with the £15,000 prize for his story ‘The Edge of the Shoal’.

The panel, chaired by Sandeep Mahal, Director of  Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, will explore how to lose and find yourself in words – the special power in short stories to capture the imagination of the reader.

This exciting exhibition aims to explore multilingualism through photography. Taken by members of the public, photographs will display what multilingualism means to different people and their communities. You are invited to explore multilingualism, and how visible it is in your environment, through the themes and messages that emerge from the photographic contributions.

The exhibition will be formally introduced by a member of the team on Saturday 18 November, 1.30-4pm.

No booking required.

The exhibition will also be showing in Belfast, Cambridge and Edinburgh.

Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust and Dr Rob Lambert will host a day exploring our lost connection with nature (particularly in modern urban environments) due to our busy, fast-paced technological lives. Hosted at the  Attenborough Nature Centre, this day event will explore the value of ‘wild words’, writing and language in a wild setting. Through discussion, workshops and interactive sessions participants will unlock and share the power of language to reconnect minds and bodies with nature all around us.

Wild words, whether in the form of poetry, literature or spoken language have the power to inspire an emotional and enduring connection with the natural world. Accessible nature writing is inspiring and entertaining and can help us understand and engage with the wonders of nature. Words challenge us to view our surroundings from different perspectives. Connecting with nature is, after all, part of being human.

Activities will be suitable for a wide range of ages.

Come along to explore and create stories about migrants to the East Midlands from over a thousand years ago. Men, women and children from Scandinavia settled across the region in the Viking Age (AD 750-1100). Once here, the new residents engaged and interacted with existing communities in farming and trade, while maintaining aspects of their own culture such as language, dress and religion. Today their traces can be seen in the place-names of the East Midlands, and in the objects they brought with them and used here that survive until today.

This workshop will feature replica objects used by Viking Age migrants in the East Midlands, including both jewellery and practical items of everyday use. Under the guidance of Viking experts, participants will handle and study these items, and learn about their histories. Thinking about the lives of the Viking migrants in the light of their own experiences, participants will get creative! With the support of creative writers, participants will develop short stories, poems and plays which weave together the experiences of past and present migrants.

When literature from around the world is translated into English, we gain not just a physical book, but a whole new host of descriptions of places, people and ideas. This half-day studio workshop gives you a chance to think about what is ‘found’ in translation, and to turn those ideas into beautiful screen prints! Olivia Hellewell, translator and researcher, will be encouraging us to think about languages, literature and what ideas we gain about another culture from reading. What images might form in our minds when we encounter certain books from different places.

Local artist Karoline Rerrie will lead participants through the creative process, making this a chance to learn a new technique, with no previous printing experience necessary. At the end of the session participants will be able to take away their prints and a new way of thinking about literature in translation!

Come and try your hand on the old exchange, reminisce over the Mickey Mouse character telephone, or listen out for ghostly voices on the wires. Exploring the different voices that have been lost or found down the line, ‘Switchboard’ is a 3-part series of events exploring the literary legacy of the telephone. ‘Switchboard I’ will explore the cultural history of the telephone and inspire and support writers of all levels in the production of new creative work. Participants will also have the chance to share their work at ‘Switchboard III’, a live literary event on 23 November.

Led by Dr Sarah Jackson,  New Generation Thinker and winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry.

Join one of the curators for a guided tour of the Manuscripts and Special Collections’  City of Literature exhibition Collected Words. Hear some of the stories behind the unique archives, manuscripts and rare printed books on display. Learn why DH Lawrence’s Pansies had to be smuggled into the country, discover the writings of Margaret Cavendish of Welbeck Abbey, the world’s first female science-fiction author known as ‘Mad Madge’, and view a masterpiece of medieval poetry.

In 2015 Nottingham became one of only 20 cities around the world to be recognised by  UNESCO as a City of Literature – a reflection of the city’s unique literary heritage and creativity. The Collected Words exhibition is of made from the literary archives and collections of printed books held by the  University of Nottingham. The exhibition highlights the work of Nottinghamshire writers and the treasures to be found in the historic collections of local literature lovers.

The second in a series of three events exploring the literary legacy of the telephone, this pop-up event will take place next to Dialling In, a disused Nottingham telephone box refashioned as a coffee shop. Members of the public will be invited to enter a phone booth to leave their own answer machine messages, reflecting on the significance of the telephone in their lives and imagining calls yet to be made.

Selected extracts from these recordings may be used with participants’ permission during ‘Switchboard III’, a live literary event on 23 November.

Led by Dr Sarah Jackson,  New Generation Thinker and winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry.

No booking required.

A few years ago it appeared that bookshops were in a state of terminal decline. Between 2005 and 2011 nearly 2000 bookshops had closed in Britain, a sign that the days of physical bricks and mortar bookshops were coming to a close. However, in 2015 the American Booksellers’ Association announced a rise in the number of new independent bookshops, and boldly claimed that the word ‘endangered’ could be decoupled from the word ‘bookstores’.

This discussion, led by Professor Andrew Thacker, will explore how independent bookshops such as City Lights in San Francisco (publisher of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl) and Shakespeare and Company in Paris (publisher of James Joyce’s Ulysses) have been important institutions in the development of modern literature and culture. The discussion will consider what the modern bookshop can learn from looking at these earlier examples of book selling, and what the future prospects are for the independent bookshop.

The archives held by  Manuscripts and Special Collections in Nottingham contain over 80,000 rare books and 3 ½ million manuscripts, dating from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Join a behind-the-scenes tour of the archives and view some of the treasures from the literary collections.

Explore collections of papers by and about the famous local author DH Lawrence, a collection that has been designated as being of outstanding national and international significance. Discover some of the region’s lesser known writers, and view rare works from the extensive collections of children’s literature.

You will visit the archive store, conservation and digitisation studios and have the opportunity to learn more about the unique material held by Manuscripts and Special Collections and find out how the papers of writers and authors end up in an archive.

Calling all men! Join a cafe drop-in session to tell your thoughts about food. Talk openly and contribute a few words, sentences or images to a storyboard to encourage a wider conversation and raise awareness of men’s concerns about weight, body shape, diet, exercise, over- or under-eating. This is a drop-in for men of all ages, ethnic groups and backgrounds.

Further information for those who want it will be available at the cafe.

This event takes place simultaneously in multiple cafes across Nottingham. No booking is required and you can drop in to any cafe. Just turn up!

Participating cafés

• Cartwheel Café
• Nottingham Contemporary Café
• Edin’s Kitchen
• Nottingham Lakeside Arts

Ever thought about creating and publishing your own digital story? If so, this event, hosted by the  National Videogame Arcade, is for you. Participants will take part in a two-hour ‘storyfest’ workshop led by Dr Spencer Jordan, in which you’ll be introduced to the Twine digital platform and taken through the basics of interactive, digital narrative building. You’ll create your own story and then be shown how you can publish it to the web.

No skills or knowledge of digital storytelling is necessary. Simply bring enthusiasm and lots of creativity.

Between 1899 and 1966 Boots the Chemist operated an extensive, national, circulating library, one which was renowned for service and the environment it created for subscribers. Come and find out why Jesse Boot went to the trouble of running such a popular service as a loss leader. This talk will remember the style and elegance of the libraries which were show pieces of contemporary interior design and most importantly the stories of the librarians who worked there.

Drawing on archive research and oral histories, hear how the libraries celebrated the reading year with a calendar of displays, subscription drives, holiday influxes and joining in with local events.

Discussion led by Dr Nickianne Moody of  Liverpool John Moores University and Boots archivist Judith Wright.

The last of a 3-part series, ‘Switchboard III’ is a live literature event exploring the legacy of the telephone and sharing new and published writing by emerging and established voices.

The event will celebrate the relationship between writing and calling. Come along to listen to stories and poems about the telephone or share your own experiences of dialling in.

No booking required.

Nottingham-born Geoffrey Trease was a successful 20th-century writer of historical fiction for children. This workshop will re-exam the impact of Trease through two of his books, his very first book, Bows Against the Barons (1934) and Tales out of School(1949). Both are radical books in their very own way: Bows Against the Barons is an early depiction of Robin Hood as a radical anti-establishment leader in the shape of Wat Tyler, and Tales out of School challenges ideas about the role of fiction in the education of young readers.

This talk, which explores literature and its place in Nottingham’s local history and culture, will be led by Dr Gaby Neher.

Come along to a creative writing workshop to explore languages and what it means to be multilingual.

The workshops will be led by  Nottingham Writers Studio.

Morning workshop - ‘What you can and can't yet say in your language’

Invites participants to think about what they can and can’t yet say in their languages, and what is important for them to say.

Afternoon workshop - ‘What has it got in its pockets?’

Participants will write in their own language about what they find in their pockets.