No Alibis Bookstore

Aaron Edwards - A People Under Siege - Book Launch
2023-06-15 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/London) | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
In Northern Ireland’s centenary year, military and political historian Aaron Edwards, a native of Belfast, explores the profound challenges facing Unionists, as extraordinary uncertainty hangs over the future of the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
In doing so he confronts the narrow, sectional beliefs and prejudices of unionists and loyalists, as well as outlining their more positive and forward-thinking aspects. By embracing these, Edwards explains how divisions could be healed and a position reached of mutual acceptance, tolerance and understanding that will benefit the entire population.
Pre-order your copy here
https://noalibis.com/product/a-people-under-siege-the-unionists-of-northern-ireland-from-partition-to-brexit-and-beyond-pre-order-may-2023/
Reserve your Free place here
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/aaron-edwards-a-people-under-siege-book-launch-tickets-639732797017

Challenging the Narrative - Cahal McLaughlin - Book Launch
2023-06-20 17:30 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Book launch of ‘Challenging the Narrative: Documentary Film as Participatory Practice in Conflict Situations’

The book addresses the role of filmmakers in creating platforms for survivors of political violence to tell their stories in order to challenge marginalizing narratives and injustices. Reflecting on films produced in the North of Ireland, South Africa, Haiti and Brazil, the challenges and limitations of participatory practice as a form of public acknowledgement are addressed.

Book your FREE space below
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/challenging-the-narrative-book-launch-tickets-635440308067
Order the book here
https://noalibis.com/product/challenging-the-narrative/

Lee Child and Andrew Child in Armagh
2023-07-24 20:30 - 22:00 | Market Place Theatre, Market Place Theatre, 9 Market Street, Armagh, Co. Armagh, BT61 7BW, United Kingdom
In association with the John Hewitt International Summer School, we would like to invite you to the Market Place Theatre in Armagh for an evening with Lee Child and his brother Andrew Child, in conversation with Stuart Neville.
The annual highlight of the JHISS, multi award-winning Armagh writer Stuart Neville invites two of the most popular and critically acclaimed international crime writers to join him for this JHISS Crime Fiction Special.
Lee Child is one of the world’s leading thriller writers. He is the creator of the iconic Jack Reacher Series, a global phenomenon. Having written over 24 Jack Reacher novels and numerous short stories, his books have consistently achieved the number one slot on bestseller lists around the world, with book sales of over one hundred million. Now resident in the USA he grew up in the Midlands, and after an extraordinary writing career he has announced his retirement from writing.
Andrew Child, his brother, is a highly successful thriller author in his own right and has taken on the daunting task of continuing the Jack Reacher Series. Lee and Andrew have collaborated on three thrillers to date, with the most recent, No Plan B, having been described by Karin Slaughter as “perfectly plotted … with bigger twists than ever before”.
“Lee and Andrew Child nail it again with No Plan B.” Richard Osman
‘It’s no wonder Jack Reacher is everyone’s favourite rebel hero.’ Karin Slaughter.
Stuart Neville is a critically acclaimed best-selling crime writer whose Jack Lemon and DCI Serena Flanagan series have won him many awards.
Tickets can be purchased here:
https://marketplacearmagh.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873635901

Denise Mina in Armagh
2023-07-26 13:30 - 14:30 | Market Place Theatre, Market Place Theatre, 9 Market Street, Armagh, Co. Armagh, BT61 7BW, United Kingdom
In association with the John Hewitt International Summer School, we would like to invite you to the Market Place Theatre in Armagh for an event with Denise Mina in conversation with Brian McGilloway.
Denise Mina in Conversation with Brian McGilloway
Denise Mina is a Scottish crime writer, playwright and comic book writer. A former university tutor in criminology and criminal law, it was during her PhD studies at Strathclyde University that she penned her first novel: Garnethill (1998).The prize-winning author of fifteen crime novels, she received the Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year Award twice. In 2019 she was awarded the MacIlvanny Prize for Scottish Crime for her thriller, Conviction, a New York Times Bestseller, while The Less Dead was shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Book Awards best novel category. In her latest book, The Second Murderer, a smart, atmospheric and witty mystery (published July 2023), she delivers a clever and timely new take on Raymond Chandler’s infamous detective, Philip Marlowe. denisemina.com/
“…one of the most original voices in the notably expanding field of Irish crime fiction.” The Irish Independent.
“Denise Mina is crime-writing royalty.” Val McDermid
“Denise Mina is the cream of the crop, an author who pushes the crime novel in new and exciting directions.” Ian Rankin
Brian McGilloway is the author of the Inspector Benedict Devlin Mysteries and Lucy Black series. His most recent standalone novel, The Empty Room, was published in March 2022.
Tickets can be purchased here: https://marketplacearmagh.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873637167

We Play Here by Dawn Watson: Book Launch
2023-08-03 19:00 - 20:30 | Great Hall, QUB, Great Hall, Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, BT7 1NN, United Kingdom
Join us in the Great Hall at Queen’s for the launch of Dawn Watson’s much anticipated collection, We Play Here (Granta Books). Dawn will read from the book for the first time and audience members will have the chance to buy a signed copy on the night.
We Play Here is a collection of four poem-stories, taking place in an underdeveloped area of Protestant north Belfast in the summer of 1988, against a backdrop of political turbulence during the Troubles. Written from the perspective of four female friends in the months between finishing primary school and starting high school, Watson paints an eerie, elemental landscape of normalised violence, poverty and neglect.
This is a graceful, lyrical and evocative rendering of history through the expansive and imaginative space of a working-class girlhood.
‘An extraordinary, enviably great debut. Watson has that rare ability to capture the ever-present strangeness of childhood and to use that to let us into a specific history with intellectual and imaginative generosity… a game-changing narrative long poem you’ll want to keep close’
– Luke Kennard
‘In We Play Here, Dawn Watson gives us a closely mapped, child’s-eye view of a North Belfast community in the mid-1980s, where everyday violence refracts along gender lines in a way little enough heard about. Watson’s sequences, in the voices of four twelve-year-old girls, record this broken world innocently, movingly and humorously – but, more than this, through their attention to beauty and wonder, they map these girls’ inner lives, where imagination and poetry itself survive’
– Leontia Flynn
Book your ticket here: https://www.qub.ac.uk/events/whats-on/listing/weplayherebydawnwatsonbooklaunch.html

Book event: Jo Baker - The Midnight News
2023-08-04 18:00 - 20:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for an evening with Jo Baker to celebrate the launch of her new novel, The Midnight News.
About The Midnight News: It is 1940 and twenty-year-old Charlotte Richmond watches from her attic window as enemy planes fly over London. Still grieving her beloved brother who never returned from France, she is working hard to keep her own little life ticking over: holding down a dull typist job at the Ministry of Information, sharing gin and confidences with her best friend Elena, and dodging her difficult father. She has good reason to keep her head down and stay out of trouble.
She knows what happens when she makes a nuisance of herself. On her way to work she often sees the boy who feeds the birds – a source of unexpected joy amidst the rubble of the Blitz. But every day brings new scenes of devastation, and after yet another heartbreaking loss Charlotte has an uncanny sense of foreboding.
Someone is stalking the darkness, targeting her friends. And now he is following her. She no longer knows who to trust.
She can’t even trust herself. She knows this; her family have told so her often enough. As grief and suspicion consume her, Charlotte’s nerves become increasingly frayed, and soon her very freedom is under threat…
Riveting and deeply moving, The Midnight News is a tour de force from Sunday Times bestselling author Jo Baker – a breathtaking story of friendship, love and war.
Book your free ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-event-jo-baker-the-midnight-news-tickets-663602682487?aff=oddtdtcreator

Book Launch: Grapefruit Moon by Shirley Anne McMillan
2023-08-10 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for an evening with Shirley-Anne McMillan to celebrate the launch of Grapefruit Moon.
About Grapefruit Moon:
Wealthy, popular Charlotte and quiet, working class Drew couldn’t be more different, but both face a common enemy at Cooke’s Academy in the form of the Stewards – an elite group of students whose power to manipulate school culture is feared by pupils and teachers alike. Drew, a newcomer to Cooke’s, must navigate the strict codes of masculinity laid down by the Stewards in order to have a hope of moving on to university, while Charlotte dreams of speaking freely about the constraints and abuses of the culture which is propelling her towards a life she’s not sure she wants. Through drag art and poetry the unlikely pair follow a dangerous trajectory which will lead them closer to one another and further away from the paths laid out for them.
About the author:
Shirley-Anne McMillan is a writer from Northern Ireland. She has worked as a teacher, an Online Writer in Residence for the Irish Writers Centre, a youth worker with LGBTQ young people and a creative writing tutor. She lives in Co. Down with her family and in her free time she loves playing the guitar and knitting.
Book your free spot here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-shirley-anne-mcmillan-tickets-673741788827?aff=oddtdtcreator

Falling Animals by Sheila Armstrong - Book Event
2023-08-17 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us in No Alibis for an evening to celebrate the launch of Sheila’s acclaimed debut novel, Falling Animals, in conversation with Michael Magee.
About Falling Animals:
On an isolated beach set against a lonely, windswept coastline, a pale figure sits serenely against a sand dune staring out to sea. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed and there is a faint smile on his otherwise lifeless face.
Months later, after a fruitless investigation, the nameless stranger is buried in an unmarked grave. But the mystery of his life and death lingers on, drawing the nearby villagers into its wake. From strandings to shipwrecks, it is not the first time that strangeness has washed up on their shores.
Told through a chorus of voices, Falling Animals follows the crosshatching threads of lives both true and imagined, real and surreal, past and present. Slowly, over great time and distance, the story of one man, alone on a beach, begins to unravel. Elegiac and atmospheric, dark and disquieting, Sheila Armstrong’s debut novel marks her arrival as one of the most uniquely gifted writers at work in literary fiction today.
About the author:
Sheila Armstrong is a writer from the northwest of Ireland. She spent ten years in publishing and now works as a freelance editor. Her first collection of short stories, How To Gut A Fish, which was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize, was published in 2022. Falling Animals is her debut novel.
While admission is free, is a ticketed event. To reserve a spot please use the link below.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-sheila-armstrong-tickets-665276910147

Book Event: Jennifer O'Leary - The Padre
2023-08-24 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us to celebrate the launch of Jennifer O’Leary’s new book, The Padre, published by Merrion Press.
About the book:
This startling new biography from award-winning BBC journalist Jennifer O’Leary tells the incredible true story of the Irish priest who raised millions and acquired explosives for the IRA during the height of the Troubles.
For almost two decades, Father Patrick Ryan – described by Margaret Thatcher as a ‘very dangerous man’ – evaded intelligence agencies across Europe. The subject of two unsuccessful extradition requests, he was, for a time, one of the most wanted men in Britain.
About the author:
Jennifer O’Leary works for the BBC as a reporter for BBC NI’s flagship current affairs programme, Spotlight. In that role she has reported on a wide variety of ground-breaking investigations including money laundering by the powerful mafia group, the ‘Ndrangheta, a criminal conspiracy to export horses unfit for human consumption into the food chain, and the secret intelligence war between the state and the IRA.
She was also part of a Spotlight programme team awarded Royal Television Society recognition for the programme, ‘A Woman Alone With The IRA’, which investigated the republican movement’s handling of sexual abuse allegations against a suspected IRA member. In the programme, Maíria Cahill waived her right to anonymity to tell how the republican movement responded to her allegations. Jennifer is from Cork and began her career in journalism in Dublin, writing feature articles as a freelancer for The Irish Examiner and The Sunday Business Post. She then moved into broadcast media with Today FM as a weekend hourly news presenter. She worked in the BBC’s Dublin office as a reporter before moving to Belfast, where she is currently based.

Feargal Cochrane - Belfast - The Story of a City and its People.
2023-08-26 15:00 - 16:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for a Book Signing with Feargal Cochrane in No Alibis Bookstore.

A lively and inviting history of Belfast-exploring the highs and lows of a resilient city Modern Belfast is a beautiful city with a vibrant tradition of radicalism, industry, architectural innovation, and cultural achievement. But the city’s many qualities are all too frequently overlooked, its image marred by association with the political violence of the Troubles. Feargal Cochrane tells the story of his home city, revealing a rich and complex history which is not solely defined by these conflicts.
From its emergence as a maritime port to its heyday as a center for the linen industry and crucible of liberal radicalism in the late eighteenth century, through to the famous shipyards where the Titanic was built, Belfast has long been a hub of innovation. Cochrane’s book offers a new perspective on this fascinating story, demonstrating how religion, culture, and politics have shaped the way people think, act, and vote in the city-and how Belfast’s past continues to shape its present and future.
Get your tickets on Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/feargal-cochrane-belfast-the-story-of-a-city-and-its-people-tickets-690777593377?aff=oddtdtcreator

Jane Cassidy book launch "The Desire Line"
2023-08-29 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Born and brought up where the Mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea, Jane Cassidy has been working in the Arts in Northern Ireland since graduating from Queen’s University Belfast in 1980, first as a singer then broadcaster and now thriller writer. Jane has lived in Belfast since her student days and has set her first published thriller The Desire Line (Poolbeg Press) in Belfast and Islandmagee. Her sleuth Jer McCabe is a freelance tv producer – a creative, maverick investigator who can’t let the hare sit when it comes to solving a mystery, especially when the health and happiness of his vulnerable wife Nora is at stake. He and Nora give a new friend Helena a life home from hospital to Islandmagee only to find an empty hillside where she claims her house should be. Is she deluded or the victim of a malevolent force? Jer puts his career on the line to find out.
The Desire Line is published by Poolbeg Press.
Tickets are free of charge and can be reserved using the link below
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/jane-cassidy-book-launch-for-the-desire-line-tickets-673666553797?aff=oddtdtcreator

Book Launch: Lazy City by Rachel Connolly
2023-08-30 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us to celebrate the launch of Rachel Connolly’s debut novel, Lazy City, in conversation with Nicole Flattery.
About Lazy City:
Following the death of her best friend, Erin has to get out of London. Returning home to Belfast, an au pair job provides a partial refuge from her grief and her volatile relationship with her mother. Erin spends late nights at the bar where her childhood friend Declan works.
There Erin meets an American academic who is also looking to get lost. Parallel to this she reconnects with an old flame, Mikey. This brings its own web of complications.
With a startlingly fresh and original voice – jarringly funny, cranky, often hungover – Lazy City depicts the strange, meandering aftermath that follows disaster.
About the author:
Rachel Connolly was born in 1993 in Belfast and now lives in London. She has written for the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Guardian and many other publications. She has also featured as a guest to discuss her work on This American Life and several BBC radio programs.
Book your free ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-lazy-city-by-rachel-connolly-tickets-682093157997?aff=oddtdtcreator

The Land Of Lost Things - John Connolly - Signing
2023-09-01 18:30 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
John Connolly will be joining us in No Alibis Bookstore to sign copies of his latest novel,
The Land Of Lost Things.
Phoebe, an eight-year-old girl, lies comatose following a car accident—a body without a spirit. Ceres, her mother, can only sit by her bedside and read aloud the fairy stories Phoebe loves in the hope they might summon her back to this world. But an old house on the hospital grounds, a property connected to a book written by a vanished author, is calling to Ceres. Something wants her to enter, to journey to a land colored by the memories of childhood, and the folklore beloved of her father—a land of witches and dryads, giants and mandrakes; a land where old enemies are watching and waiting…

Reserve your signed copy here
https://noalibis.com/product/the-land-of-lost-things-special-independent-edn/
Book your free space here
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-land-of-lost-things-john-connolly-signing-tickets-661109675837

Poetry Reading - Hard Drive by Paul Stephenson
2023-09-06 18:00 - 19:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
When his partner suddenly died, life changed utterly for Paul Stephenson. Hard Drive is the outcome of his revisiting a world he thought he knew, but which had been upended. In poems that are affectionate, self-examining, sometimes funny and often surprised by grief in the oddest corners, the poet takes us through rooms, routines, and rituals of bereavement, the memory of love, a shared life and separation. A noted formalist, with a flair for experiment, pattern and the use of constraints, Stephenson has written a remarkable first book, moving and, despite everything, a hopeful record of a gay relationship. It is also a landmark elegy collection.

Reserve your Free Space here

Book Event: Thomas Morris - Open Up
2023-09-12 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for an evening with Thomas Morris to celebrate his new collection of short stories, Open Up, in conversation with Michael Magee.
About Open Up:
The new collection from a literary star – five achingly tender, innovative and dazzling stories of (dis)connection. From a child attending his first football match, buoyed by secret magic, and a wincingly humane portrait of adolescence, to the perplexity of grief and loss through the eyes of a seahorse, Thomas Morris seeks to find grace, hope and benevolence in the churning tumult of self-discovery.
Philosophically acute. Wincingly humane. Strikingly original. This outstanding suite of stories is bursting with a bracing emotional depth. Open Up cracks the heart as it expands the short story form.
About Thomas Morris:
Thomas Morris is a Welsh writer and editor. He was born and raised in Caerphilly and was educated in the Welsh language all through primary and secondary school. He then moved to Ireland where he studied English and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. He still lives in Dublin.
Morris edited the short story anthology Dubliners 100 in 2014. He is also an editor of The Stinging Fly magazine. His first book, the short story collection We Don’t Know What We’re Doing (2015) received critical acclaim and several awards.
In 2023, Thomas was named as one of the Best Young British Novelists by Granta magazine.
Book your free spot here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-event-thomas-morris-open-up-tickets-673645169837?aff=oddtdtcreator

BOOK LAUNCH - Richard O'Rawe: Stakeknife's Dirty War
2023-09-15 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for a Book Launch with Richard O’Rawe

In this sensational exposé of British Intelligence’s top informer in the upper ranks of the IRA, Richard O’Rawe delivers the most definitive account yet of the Troubles’ most enigmatic, notorious and sinister figure, Freddie Scappaticci.
In this compelling and extraordinary story of state-sanctioned murder and extreme moral ambiguity in the overriding quest for the protection of ‘national security’, the truth is truly stranger than fiction.
Book your FREE space here

Two Summers - Glenn Patterson - Book Launch
2023-09-21 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for a Book Launch with Glenn Patterson on Thursday 21st September in No Alibis Bookstore
A pair of novellas, set over two pivotal summers in the lives of two young men from Belfast, recall the constraints of the place where they were born and the times in which they are living. Capturing the innocence of adolescent boys, their passion, confusion and yearning, TWO SUMMERS is for anyone who has ever been young.
Book your FREE space here

Glenn’s eleven novels to date are: Burning Your Own (1988), a Rooney Prize and Betty Trask first novel prize-winner; Fat Lad(1992); Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (1995), The International (1999); Number 5 (2003), That Which Was (2004), The Third Party (2007); The Mill For Grinding Old People Young, the inaugural One City One Book choice for Belfast (2012); The Rest Just Follows (2014); Gull (2016) and Where Are We Now (2020)
He has also published two essay collections , Lapsed Protestant (2006) and Here’s Me Here (2014), and the family memoir, Once upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times (2009) and Backstop Land (2019)
Short stories and plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and he has also presented television documentaries on literary and cultural subjects. His feature film Good Vibrations (co-written with Colin Carberry) was released in 2013. In 2009 he was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship.

BOOK LAUNCH: Máiría Cahill - Rough Beast
2023-09-28 18:30 - 20:30 | Crescent Arts Centre, 2-4 University Rd Belfast BT7 1NH, United Kingdom
Máiría Cahill grew up steeped in the traditions of Irish republicanism and the shadowy world of the IRA: her great-uncle Joe was one of the main founders of the Provisional IRA and her grandfather was Gerry Adams’s mentor in the republican movement. From an early age she seemed destined for a glittering career within the increasingly successful political machine of Sinn Fein, which was then enjoying the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement. She worked in a radio station alongside leading republicans; the Sinn Fein offices were her second home.
She knew Gerry Adams and other senior republicans as family friends. But at the age of 16, she was sexually abused by a prominent Belfast IRA man. When she confided in some friends she trusted about the abuse, one of them told the IRA without Máiría’s knowledge.
A year later the organisation came calling, and forced her to take part in an inept and grotesquely insensitive internal investigation. She was subjected to round after round of interrogations by senior IRA men and women, usually in a network of safe houses around Belfast. Doubt was cast on her account of what had been done to her.
Her assailant was allowed to confront and denounce her. Eventually her rapist was permitted to vanish from Belfast while Sinn Fein and the IRA professed bafflement about his whereabouts. Gerry Adams emerges chillingly from Cahill’s meticulous account of her ordeal, a mixture of smugly avuncular concern and denial.
Rough Beast is Máiría Cahill’s harrowing story of her life and of what she went through at the hands of what is now Ireland’s largest and richest party. That story is told here for the first time in full detail and with unsparing honesty. It is a story of unimaginable trauma and political corruption.
It brings to life a world of paramilitary secrecy and parallel laws, but above all it is the story of one young woman’s defiance of the power wielded by ex-gunmen inspiring fear and silence, and their influence over elected politicians.
Pre-Order your SIGNED copy here
Reserve your FREE space here

An Evening With Carl Frampton
2023-09-30 19:00 - 21:00 | Europa Hotel, Great Victoria St, Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT2 7AP
Join us for a truly amazing event with Carl Frampton in the Europa Hotel, Belfast on
Saturday 30th September at 7pm.
Ticket Price £22.50 includes a SIGNED copy of Carl’s AutobiographyBelfast’s Carl ‘The Jackal’ Frampton MBE is no ordinary boxer. One of only three fighters from the British Isles to be named the Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year, he has headlined multiple sell-out world championship bouts on both sides of the Atlantic, winning multiple world titles in the process. His dedicated army of fans have traversed the globe to be ringside throughout it all.
But Frampton’s popularity far exceeds the traditional adulation for a sporting icon; he is regarded as a symbol of hope and unity by both sides of the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland.
In this captivating autobiography, Frampton reveals the most personal aspects of being a fighter; of fears and doubts, of exhilaration and devastation, of friendship and animosity. He also recounts for the first time his high-profile, acrimonious split with Barry McGuigan, in devastating and revealing detail.
Frampton speaks openly and passionately, not only about boxing, but about his country, how far it has come and the problems it faces. This is a uniquely intimate account of a true modern-day sporting great and a local hero like no other.The ticket price includes a copy of the fearless, fast-paced autobiography of World Title winning boxer and Belfast hero Carl Frampton, with a foreword by Patrick Kielty.

Event Details
Doors Open at 6:00PM
From 7:00PM to 9:00PM
Book your ticket here.

Book Launch: Michael Viney's Natural World
2023-10-05 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for an evening to celebrate the launch of the writer, artist and naturalist Michael Viney’s book,
“Michael Viney’s Natural World”
The event will be hosted by Michael Longley, who has written the introduction to this beautiful new publication.
Michael Longley will be talking about Michael Viney’s work, and reading from his own poetry on the night.
About the book:
Not long before he died, Michael completed this book, which he described as ‘a personal popular narrative that gives a lot of my illustrations a further bit of life’. This highly visual publication contains over fifty of Michael’s meticulous illustrations in full colour, accompanied by a personal narrative full of keen insights and observations on nature, our relationship with nature, and a growing awareness of our vulnerability.
Praise for the book:
“Michael Viney’s words and images are vital in both sense. The sense of wonder they convey so powerfully is vital for our survival on Earth. And their vitality makes us glad to be alive. His eye is as sharp as it is keen, but it is always seeking out the possibility of joy. This gorgeous book, which brings together his words and his pictures as never before, reminds us how visual his writing is and how precisely expressive are his drawings and paintings. It throbs with the pulse of a life so richly lived and so generally shared.”
Fintan O’Toole
“With the eye of an artist, the soul of a poet and the discipline of a scientist, Michael Viney brings a unique and compelling perspective on our natural world. His writing and illustrations draw primarily on experiences and observations in and around his one-acre holding in my native county, Mayo. But his outlook is anything but parochial — instead, he alerts us to the urgent need to respect Earth’s systems and tread gently — as he did — on this planet we call home.”
Mary Robinson
Book your free ticket here : https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/book-launch-michael-vineys-natural-world-tickets-700895255577?aff=oddtdtcreator

Book Event: Bryan Moriarty - Sounds Like Fun
2023-10-12 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Book Event: Bryan Moriarty – Sounds Like Fun
Join us for an evening with Bryan Moriarty as we celebrate his debut novel Sounds Like Fun.

Date and time
Thu, 12 Oct 2023 18:00 – 19:30
No Alibis Bookstore 83 Botanic Avenue Belfast BT7 1JL
Book your FREE tickets here
Meet Eoin. Eoin is doing great. He’s 27, gainfully employed and in a long-term relationship with his boyfriend Rich.
Okay, so his best friend Jax is diving into yet another disastrously bad relationship and Eoin’s going to be the one dealing with the eventual fallout. And his boss at the café, Rebecca, seems to have vanished, so somehow Eoin’s left managing the place.
And to be honest, he’s not got much else going on.
But still, he’s got his boyfriend Rich – steady, sensible and dependable Rich. That is, until Eoin’s world is turned upside down when Rich announces that he wants an open relationship. Terrified of losing the man he loves, Eoin reluctantly agrees to this new arrangement, and stumbles into the world of dating with no strings attached.
A warm and bittersweet novel about love, loneliness, coffee and the pitfalls of an ill-advised selfie, perfect for fans of Monica Heisey, Nora Ephron and Katherine Heiny.
‘Moriarty’s uplifting debut has much in common with Ephron’s classic novel Heartburn, covering as it does long-term love, casual sex and heartbreak.’ IRISH INDEPENDENT
‘Delightful . . . entertaining, often funny, but also makes you think about relationships, loneliness, and how to find out who you really are’ IRISH EXAMINER

Book Launch: ISDAL by Susannah Dickey
2023-10-18 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us to celebrate the launch of Susannah Dickey’s debut poetry collection, ISDAL. The event will be hosted by local poet Sacha White.
About ISDAL:
Shortlisted for the 2023 Forward Prize for Best First Collection
The much-anticipated debut poetry collection from acclaimed novelist Susannah Dickey, on the subject of our cultural obsession with true crime.
ISDAL is a timely interrogation of the true crime genre. In the first of its three parts, we follow the flirty co-presenters of a podcast about the mystery of ‘Isdal Woman’, whose burnt remains were discovered in Norway in 1970 and who has never been identified.
At the centre of the book is an inquiry into our perennial obsession with female victims, sexiness, and death: ‘The death in question has already occurred’, the poet observes, ‘has occurred to someone sufficiently abstract as to allow us to romp gainfully, guilelessly, guiltlessly through a simulacrum of death’s corridors’.
The free verse poems in the final section both explore and – perhaps inevitably – enact the ethical ambiguities of the genre. Witty, excoriating, formally ingenious, ISDAL marks the arrival of a thrilling talent in contemporary poetry.
About the author:
Susannah Dickey is a poet and novelist from Derry and the author of four pamphlets, I had some very slight concerns; genuine human values; bloodthirsty for marriage; and Oh!. Her poems have been published in The Poetry Review, The TLS, Poetry London, and Poetry Ireland Review, amongst others. She is an Eric Gregory Award winner, a prize granted for a collection by poets under the age of thirty. Susannah is the author of two novels, Tennis Lessons and Common Decency. ISDAL is her debut poetry collection.
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K Patrick and Tom Crewe
2023-10-21 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us as two exciting novelists discuss their new works centred around LGBTQ+ themes as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival.
K Patrick is a writer based in Scotland. In 2023, they were named an Observer Best Debut Novelist and were selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. They were runner up for the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship and were shortlisted for The White Review Short Story Prize. Their poetry has appeared in Poetry Review and Five Dials, and was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize. Mrs S is their debut novel which The Guardian calls, ‘atmospheric and daring’ and The Telegraph describes as ‘bold and beautiful… desire crackles through these pages like fire’.
Tom Crewe was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he contributes essays on politics, art, history and fiction. A Granta Best of Young British Novelist for 2023, his book The New Life ‘brims with intelligence and insight’ (The New York Times) and has been shortlisted for The Orwell Prize For Political Fiction.
Click here to purchase your tickets via the Belfast International Arts Festival website.

Jacqueline Crooks and Santanu Bhattacharya-EVENT CANCELLED
2023-10-31 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
EVENT CANCELLED.
PLEASE CONTACT BIAF THROUGH LINK BELOW TO ARRANGE A REFUND
Two of the most exciting debut novelists of 2023 come together to discuss their works and influences as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival.
Jacqueline Crooks grew up in 70s and 80s Southall, part of London’s migrant community carving out a space through music, culture and politics. Immersed in the gang underworld as a young woman, she later discovered the power of writing and music to help her look outwards and engage differently with the world – a power that has driven her ever since, from her work with charities to her short stories, which have been nominated for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award. Her much lauded first novel Fire Rush has been shortlisted for The Women’s Prize For Fiction 2023.
Santanu Bhattacharya grew up in India and studied at the University of Oxford and the National University of Singapore. He is the winner of the 2021 Mo Siewcharran Prize, Life Writing Prize and London Writers’ Awards. His works have been nominated for the 4thWrite Prize, Blue Pencil Agency First Novel Award, and Pontas/JJ Bola Emerging Writers’ Prize, and have appeared in Commonwealth Writers’ adda. His debut novel One Small Voice was published in February 2023 to critical acclaim including an Observer Best Debut Novel of 2023.
Click here to purchase your tickets via the Belfast International Arts Festival Website.

Keina Yoshida
2023-11-01 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for an evening with eminent human rights barrister Dr Keina Yoshida, as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival.
In Keina Yoshida’s book, written alongside fellow human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson, How Many More Women: The silencing of women by the law and how to stop it she examines the broken systems and explore the changes needed in order to ensure that women’s freedom, including their freedom of speech, is no longer threatened by the laws that are supposed to protect them.
Dr Keina Yoshida is a human rights barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London. Keina has represented victims and survivors of abuse in different legal proceedings, including in judicial reviews and in the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse. Keina is also an academic at the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the LSE and sits on the editorial board of the journal Feminist Legal Studies. Keina’s publications include Feminist Conversations on Peace (Bristol University Press, 2022) as well as academic journal articles in the European Human Rights Law Review, Human Rights Quarterly and International Affairs.
Click here to purchase your tickets via the Belfast International Arts Festival website.

Rachel Connolly and Nicole Flattery
2023-11-03 18:00 - 19:30 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Join us for an evening with Rachel Connolly and Nicole Flattery as part of the Belfast International Arts Festival.
Belfast writer Rachel Connolly’s Lazy City is an electrifying debut set in Northern Ireland exploring dysfunctional relationships, love and heartbreak as a young woman grieves the loss of her best friend. She has written for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Guardian and many other publications. She has also featured as a guest to discuss her work on This American Life and several BBC radio programs.
Nicole Flattery is the winner of An Post Irish Book Award, the Kate O’Brien Prize, the London Magazine Prize for Debut Fiction, and the White Review Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in the Stinging Fly, the Guardian, the White Review, and the London Review of Books. Her debut novel Nothing Special is described as a wildly original debut novel about two young women navigating the complex worlds of Andy Warhol’s Factory, and coming of age in 1960s New York.
Click here to purchase your tickets via the Belfast International Arts Festival website.

An Evening With Liam Brady- EVENT CANCELLED
2023-11-03 19:00 - 22:00 | Europa Hotel, Great Victoria St, Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT2 7AP
EVENT CANCELLED
An Evening With Liam Brady
Europa Hotel Belfast
Friday 3rd November 7pm

Begin Again - A Visual Journey with Oliver Jeffers
2023-11-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Mandela Hall. Queens University Belfast, Mandela Hall .77 University Road, Belfast, Antrim, BT7 1NF, United Kingdom
Take a visually stunning journey through humankind’s history with globally renowned artist and internationally bestselling author, Oliver Jeffers, as he examines our shared motivations for existence in his first illustrated book aimed at an adult audience, BEGIN AGAIN: The Story of How We Got Here and Where We Might Go.
This is a ticketed event that includes a solo presentation from Oliver, a moderated Q&A, and a signed copy of Begin Again! While investigating the ways the human mind understands its world, Oliver Jeffers’ work functions as comic relief in the face of futility. His new book, Begin Again, is a powerful and thought-provoking visual examination of the state of the world, building upon his artistic exploration of humankind’s impact on itself and on our planet. Featuring Jeffers’ bold and iconic art, Begin Again follows humankind on its journey through history, sharing profound, sometimes poignant, commentary on our present, and the offers a challenge: where do we go from here?
Jeffers’ engagements and practice are truly International in scope. His critically acclaimed picture books have been translated into over fifty languages and sold over 14 million copies worldwide. His original artwork has been exhibited at such institutions as the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the National Portrait Gallery in London, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Begin Again will be released in October 2023.
Tickets: £22.50 (includes a Signed Copy Of Begin Again) £7.50 (Admission only to Begin Again – A Visual Journey)
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Book Launch: Michael Mansfield K.C. - The Power in the People : How We Can Change The World
2023-11-15 18:30 - 19:30 | Room 02/026 Peter Froggatt Centre QUB
Join us for an evening with Michael Mansfield K.C. to celebrate the launch of his new book, The Power in the People : How We Can Change The World.
Barrister Michael Mansfield, KC, has spent his career fighting injustice, persecution and corruption. And be it the Birmingham Six, Bloody Sunday, Stephen Lawrence, the Marchioness, Hillsborough or Grenfell, he has come to learn one thing – that people power is unstoppable.
Time and again he has witnessed governments, police forces, legal institutions and the establishment, try to block change and maintain the status quo in order to protect their interests. But almost every time he has seen that passion, perseverance, collectivity and courage create a powerful momentum which is increasingly difficult to stop.
In this short but powerful book, the veteran barrister draws upon his 50 years of fighting for justice and revisits his most important cases and clients, proving without doubt that when people get together they can make lasting and positive change.
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‘I want this book to inspire people, give them a blueprint for fighting their own battles, and challenge the status quo. To see that together, we are always stronger. To understand that those who stand in the way of change cannot do so forever.’ Michael Mansfield, KC

The Book Who Wanted To Be Loved Storytime Event
2023-12-09 11:00 - 12:00 | No Alibis Bookstore, 83 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL, United Kingdom
Come along to an exciting event with the author and illustrator of The Book Who Wanted To Be Loved, for a storytime, Q&A, and some drawing!
If attending, please select enough tickets for both parent and child
A magical and enchanting debut, The Book Who Wanted to Be Loved will capture the hearts of readers with its celebration of bookshops, stories, and the power of books. Penned by a dynamic duo of long-time book lovers, this extraordinary tale is set to win over the hearts of readers of all ages.
In the heart of a cosy bookshop resides our lovable hero, content with his existence or so he believes. Brimming with excitement, romance, daring deeds, and adventure within his pages, he watches as his friends are chosen by excited children, adored, and carried away.
It is at this moment that he yearns for something more—to be loved. Fuelled by this desire, he embarks on an epic journey, venturing beyond the confines of the bookshop. Along the way, he encounters numerous prospective friends, but none seem to fit perfectly. Could it be that the love he seeks has been within the bookshop all along?
