Off the Shelf 2021

About

Celebrating books, words, ideas and our 30th Edition!

Welcome to the festival programme that comes with a heartfelt thanks to all of our partners and friends who have supported us over the past year. It has been a difficult time, but books, reading, ideas and conversations are at the core of what we do and our 30th edition is a time for us to celebrate our past, present and future with uplifting and thought-provoking events.

Some of the festival activity will be online and we are delighted to bring you live events in real venues with the chance to hear some wonderful speakers in person.

Our 30th edition features a brilliant, varied mix of events with everything from prizewinning fiction to pertinent politics, Queer culture and iconic 80s music, comedy, history and magnificent memoirs.

We celebrate the 70th anniversary of The Peak District with a new commission by the Poet Laureate Simon Armitage and look from the Peak to South Yorkshire with events in Doncaster, Rotherham and Barnsley working with our partners in the region. Sheffield writer Désirée Reynolds curates the second year of Black Women Write Now, a strand celebrating black women’s voices, this time applauding pioneering women writers. Look out for the buzzz of Biography of a Fly written by Dutch writer Jaap Robben – a quirky tale of a fly split over 30 poster sites in the city centre, that’s been created working in collaboration with the Dutch Literature Foundation. Finally, we offer family friendly fun events during October half-term!