BA Bookshop Mentoring Scheme with Creative Access
2026-05-22 14:00 - 15:00 (Europe/London)
Masterclass 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl_pbkGzBo4

Masterclass 2026: www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7o1H56VjRs

Throughout 2025, the Booksellers Association (BA) collaborated with Creative Access to deliver a mentoring programme designed to support young people seeking to enter—or advance within—the bookselling profession. Fifteen mentees, selected by Creative Access from communities historically under‑represented in the book trade, were paired with experienced bookseller mentors identified by the BA. In her presentation, Kate Gunning, Head of Membership Development at the BA, will discuss the origins of the initiative and provide an overview of its implementation and outcomes.

Kate Gunning, Head of Membership Development at the Booksellers Association, is a seasoned bookselling and publishing professional with extensive experience across retail management, buying, and member services. Joining the Booksellers Association in 2022 as Acting Membership Manager, she now supervises all membership processes and services and runs BA Learning, the Association’s learning and development programme. She also runs the Children’s and Christian Bookselling Groups and the Independent Booksellers Forum. Kate previously spent 13 years at Waterstones, managed stores in Paris and London, served as Book Buyer at Selfridges and Head of Buying at Foyles, and later spent 12 years as Independent Bookshops Manager at Penguin Random House.

The British Book Trade and the Book War of 1906
2026-06-19 14:00 - 15:00
With Dr Maria Vassilopoulos (University of Wales Press)

Maria Vassilopoulos has worked as a bookseller, for The Bookseller magazine and in publishing sales for her whole career, spanning over twenty years. She currently works for University of Wales Press as Global Sales Manager and Head of Sales and Marketing.

Vassilopoulos has a PhD from UCL in Book Trade History and is currently writing a short monograph about the Book War to be published by CUP. She is also author of of An Evening with the Book Society and archivist for them and the Society of Young Publishers. She is a trustee of the Book Trade Charity.

The British Book Trade and the Book War of 1906: Vassilopoulos will reminisce about the first time she encountered an event called the ‘Book War’ in 2015, when she was working on the eventual topic of her PhD thesis. Her discovery of this microhistory enabled her to conduct archival research and media analysis to tell a fuller story of the dispute between the Publishers’ Association and The Times Book Club. There will be an explanation of this so-called war and its relation to the Net Book Agreement of 1900, followed by Vassilopoulos’s findings from her research, which she believes cement it as an event that matters to the scholarly record of book trade history and, most importantly, the Net Book Agreement.

BRN Bookselling Conference 2026: Spaces of Bookselling
2026-09-09 17:00 - 2026-09-11 13:00
Bangor University | 9–11 September 2026In association with the Stephen Colclough Centre for the History and Culture of the Book

“For such a space entails the unexpected. The specifically spatial within time-space is produced by that—sometimes happenstance, sometimes not—arrangement-in-relation-to-each-other that results from the multiplicity of trajectories. In spatial configurations, otherwise unconnected narratives may be brought into contact, or previously connected ones may be wrenched apart. There is always an element of ‘chaos.’ This is the chance of space.”— Doreen Massey, For Space (2005)

How Queer Bookshops Changed the World
2026-11-25 14:00 - 15:30
With A. J. West, author of How Queer Bookshops Changed the World (Oneworld, 2026).

A.J.West is a Sunday Times bestselling, multi-award-winning historical fiction novelist and historian. Prior to publication he was a breakfast host on BBC television news. He appears regularly on national television and radio programmes discussing literature, history and current affairs. His novel, The Betrayal of Thomas True, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller, winning the coveted CWA Historical Dagger award, while The Spirit Engineer won the Historical Writers Association Debut Crown. With a passion for digging up forgotten historical stories and bringing them back to life, he spends much of his time exploring archives and visiting locations of historical interest, not to mention touring independent bookshops.

Join via zoom: https://ucl.zoom.us/j/97453193955?pwd=[REDACTED]

Meeting ID: 974 5319 3955

Passcode: [REDACTED]
