Benjamin Zephaniah, presented Five Leaves with a trophy and £5,000 in prize money at a black tie dinner at London's Grosvenor House Hotel, in front of a thousand strong crowd from the book trade nationally.
Ross Bradshaw, from Five Leaves Bookshop, said:
“It was not the most likely setting to find a radical bookshop, but we coped pretty well! By coincidence, Nottingham writer Jon McGregor won the very next award for Book of the Year, Fiction with his Reservoir 13. Jon was our first ever customer in 2013 and we launched Reservoir 13 when it came out so we were able to celebrate together.”
The judges of the Independent Book said:
“This is a very good bookshop - but so much more. Five Leaves is clearly as much about the act of reading and growing literacy as it is about running a business. It's genuinely collaborative, generous and public-spirited and has a stack of energy.”
Five Leaves' key strengths included a sharp increase in sales in 2017, putting on around 90 events over the last year attended by over 6,000 people, having a politically-conscious outlook with initiatives including Nottingham's first ever radical bookfair and an extensive in-house publishing programme.
Beyond all of that, the judges added:
“Five Leaves creates a distinct identity out of its emphasis on political and social issues, a passion for diversity and a reputation for poetry" carrying a stock that is "finely tuned to its market”
Five Leaves began life as a publisher in 1995, opening the bookshop in 2013, giving special interest to literature and to books advocating social change. This June the bookshop launches the national Feminist Book Fortnight, with the support of thirty other independents across the country.
Proud to pay a minimum of the Living Wage to all members of staff, the Five Leaves team includes people who used to work at Waterstones, Blackwells and Leicester University Bookshop, while owner Ross Bradshaw worked for many years at a previous radical bookshop in Nottingham, Mushroom Bookshop.
Five Leaves Bookshop trades from an alley on Long Row, opposite Nottingham Tourism Centre and is open seven days a week. For more information visit: https://fiveleavesbookshop.co....
