Book Launch 'bunker: Stories and Poems From a Nuclear Age'

Do join us for the book launch of
 

Bunker: Stories and Poems from a Nuclear Age (ed. Daniel Cordle and Sarah Jackson)

Hidden away in a patch of  wasteland in suburban Nottingham, a Cold War relic lies abandoned. This is Regional Seat of Government 3, a nuclear bunker from which a Regional Commissioner would have presided over a society and landscape devastated by nuclear war. In 2024 the bunker opened its steel doors to a group of writers and experts, giving them privileged access to this strange and haunting space before the developers moved in.

Bunker is the outcome of that visit: stories and poems that wander the windowless corridors and offices, kitchens and canteens, dormitories and washrooms of a place from a terrible alternate reality. Breathing life into the dead rooms and peopling them with figures from past and present, it is both a memorial to a key moment in history and a reflection on a twenty-first century world with its own existential fears: new nuclear threats, environmental catastrophe and social dislocation.

Join us for the launch of Bunker, featuring readings from contributing authors including Zayneb Allak, Anthony Cropper, and Jon McGregor and an introduction by editors Daniel Cordle and Sarah Jackson.

Daniel Cordle is a writer and researcher. With a background in higher education and in work with cultural and heritage organisations, he is an internationally renowned expert on the culture and history of the nuclear age, on which he has published extensively.

Sarah Jackson is a writer, curator and critic. Winner of the Seamus Heaney Prize for Poetry and BBC New Generation Thinker, she is currently a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at Northumbria University.

This is a free event. The book Bunker can be ordered in advance or bought on the night at a discounted price

The launch of Bunker will be followed by a special showing of Threads, a film about nuclear weapons and Sheffield. Tickets from Broadway Cinema, broadway.org.uk at normal cinema prices. Watch out for a dedicated website covering all the Bunker-related events over the period. There will be tours of the bunker on 17, 18 and 23 September (around 9 tours in total, each accommodating up to 15).  £10 a ticket with proceeds going to Base51. Booking details to follow.