Nick Hayes for The Medicine Tree

Nick Hayes is coming to The Bookshop on Wednesday 30 September, where he'll be presenting his book The Medicine Tree. It's an evening with the author himself, so you'll get to hear him talk through the work in person rather than just reading it at home.

If you're not already familiar with him, Hayes wears a few different hats. He's an award-winning writer and illustrator, and he's also a land justice campaigner. Back in 2020, he co-founded Right to Roam, the campaign group that advocates for public access to nature in England. That work sits right alongside his writing: he wrote the Sunday Times best-seller The Book of Trespass and co-edited Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You. He's also published four graphic novels, which have been exhibited across the country, including at the Hayward Gallery. He lives on a canal boat with no fixed address, which probably explains why so much of his work circles back to the land and who gets to be on it.

The Medicine Tree fits right into that. It's described as a deeply felt exploration of the struggle between ownership and belonging in England—the kind of thing that's easy to take for granted until you start thinking about who actually owns the ground beneath your feet. Given his background with Right to Roam, it's a subject he knows from both the political and the personal side.

The evening is at The Bookshop on 1 Museum Street, York YO1 7DT. It starts at 7pm, with doors opening at 6.30pm, so you've got plenty of time to get settled before he begins.