Attention Practices
Writing Workshop with Five Leaves
A Two-Hour Writing Workshop with Julia Bell
Saturday 19 September, 1.45pm to 3.45pm
Nottingham Central Library
Ticket price – £20
Join writer and Birkbeck professor Julia Bell for a two-hour workshop exploring the art of paying attention through reading and writing.
Drawing on the ideas in her books Radical Attention (Peninsula Press) and Between the Lines (Simon & Schuster), and on Simone Weil’s idea of attention as a moral and democratic act, the session moves between short readings, guided writing prompts and open discussion. You’ll leave with new work on the page and a set of tools for reading and writing more attentively.
About Five Leaves
We are an independent. radical bookshop that supports those who want to change the world for the better. This is reflected in the books we stock and the events we promote. Our independence means that we do our own buying and are not beholden to shareholders. The sections in the shop include books about books, Jewish interest, Roma, Paganism/witchcraft, counselling and psychotherapy, creative writing, landscape/cityscape, music, young adult/teenage, spirituality, general and translated fiction, poetry, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, biography, politics, feminism, social history. We have a children’s section which specialises in diversity. All Five Leaves titles are carried.
Bio of Julia Bell
Julia Bell is a writer and Professor of New Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, where she co-directs the Centre for New Writing and has taught creative writing for nearly thirty years. Her books include the essay Radical Attention (Peninsula Press), the memoir-in-verse Hymnal (Parthian), and Between the Lines (Simon & Schuster). Radical Attention, first published in 2020, is reissued in September 2026 with a new introduction by Grace Blakeley. Her work centres on Simone Weil’s idea of attention as a moral and democratic practice, and ranges across fiction, essay and poetry. She writes the Substack Between the Lines and lives in London.