The Margate Bookshop

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The Margate Bookshop Independent bookshop in Margate's Old Town
https://www.gofundme.com/f/free-books-for-margate

Lightning-bolt life events are distilled into liquid, lyrical prose in The Body of the Thing, the shimmering debut short...
19/10/2026

Lightning-bolt life events are distilled into liquid, lyrical prose in The Body of the Thing, the shimmering debut short story collection from Karishma Jobanputra. The unifying theme is women's bodies - in beauty and in sickness, in motherhood and in love, in youth and in death - and their considered 'worth', the tangled realities of living in one, the myriad ways in which they are perceived. Hopping from monied Manhattan to misty Maine, and from the piazzas of Italy to the packed streets of London, Jobanputra's stories confront and confound, laying bare the structures and systems that define women's relationships to the world, with each other and with themselves.

A decade in the writing, this overarching memoir from Patti Smith contains ‘the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime’, as Smi...
19/10/2026

A decade in the writing, this overarching memoir from Patti Smith contains ‘the beauty and sorrow of a lifetime’, as Smith recalls her post-wartime childhood on a condemned housing estate, her identity-shaping teenage years, her rise to cult fame and the decision to leave it all behind to marry Fred Sonic Smith. Both a lead-in and a sequel to Just Kids, Bread of Heaven is a dreamlike hymnal to love, loss, devotion and creativity from one of the most emblematic artists of our time.

Over the span of forty-eight poems, each symbolising a single kilogram of a body's mass, Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akl...
18/10/2026

Over the span of forty-eight poems, each symbolising a single kilogram of a body's mass, Palestinian poet Batool Abu Akleen lays out her life for posterity, or as she writes it, 'collect[s] the parts of myself I have found, in case there isn’t anyone there to do so if I am killed'. In both Arabic and English, Akleen paints the stark, hollowed-out landscapes of a city, a population, a body and a mind under attack, her clear voice rising from the violence and the degradation to broadcast the public and private horrors of living through a genocide.

Our next Bookshop Bookclub will be held on Wednesday, 28 October!This month we're reading The Wax Child by Olga Ravn. A ...
16/10/2026

Our next Bookshop Bookclub will be held on Wednesday, 28 October!

This month we're reading The Wax Child by Olga Ravn. A phantasmagorical fable drawn from real-life Danish witch trials, this distinctly-non-hygge folktale flashes back to a black night in 1620, as a woman moulds a small human figure from a candle, carrying it for days under her arm to give it shape, warmth, life. Watchful and supernaturally wise, the child comes to know the beauty of the pine forest, the perilous kinship of women and the violence in men's hearts. A collaboration between author Ravn and translator Martin Aitken, The Wax Child is a churning, shadowy portrayal of a time when witchcraft and magic loomed as large in people's minds as the land and the weather.

Join us from 6.30pm (discussion starts at 6.45pm) at Fort Road Bar where we meet every last Wednesday of the month!

The Wax Child is available to buy from The Margate Bookshop with a 10% discount. The Bookclub is open to all and there’s no requirement to read every book and turn up to every meeting, come whenever you fancy! The wonderful Fort Road Hotel hosts our meet-ups in their basement bar with a delicious selection of drinks.

Our next Bookshop Bookclub will be held on Wednesday, 28 October!This month we're reading The Wax Child by Olga Ravn. A ...
15/10/2026

Our next Bookshop Bookclub will be held on Wednesday, 28 October!

This month we're reading The Wax Child by Olga Ravn. A phantasmagorical fable drawn from real-life Danish witch trials, this distinctly-non-hygge folktale flashes back to a black night in 1620, as a woman moulds a small human figure from a candle, carrying it for days under her arm to give it shape, warmth, life. Watchful and supernaturally wise, the child comes to know the beauty of the pine forest, the perilous kinship of women and the violence in men's hearts. A collaboration between author Ravn and translator Martin Aitken, The Wax Child is a churning, shadowy portrayal of a time when witchcraft and magic loomed as large in people's minds as the land and the weather.

Join us from 6.30pm (discussion starts at 6.45pm) at Fort Road Bar where we meet every last Wednesday of the month!

The Wax Child is available to buy from The Margate Bookshop with a 10% discount. The Bookclub is open to all and there’s no requirement to read every book and turn up to every meeting, come whenever you fancy! The wonderful Fort Road Hotel hosts our meet-ups in their basement bar with a delicious selection of drinks.

It's time to reveal our next Bookshop Book Club pick!The Bookshop Bookclub meets every last Wednesday of the month at Fo...
15/10/2026

It's time to reveal our next Bookshop Book Club pick!

The Bookshop Bookclub meets every last Wednesday of the month at Fort Road Bar.

Our next book is The Wax Child by Olga Ravn. A phantasmagorical fable drawn from real-life Danish witch trials, this distinctly-non-hygge folktale flashes back to a black night in 1620, as a woman moulds a small human figure from a candle, carrying it for days under her arm to give it shape, warmth, life. Watchful and supernaturally wise, the child comes to know the beauty of the pine forest, the perilous kinship of women and the violence in men's hearts. A collaboration between author Ravn and translator Martin Aitken, The Wax Child is a churning, shadowy portrayal of a time when witchcraft and magic loomed as large in people's minds as the land and the weather.

The Bookclub is open to all and there’s no requirement to read every book and turn up to every meeting, come whenever you fancy! The wonderful Fort Road Hotel hosts our meet-ups in their basement bar with a delicious selection of drinks.

The Bookshop Bookclub’s next event will be Wednesday, 28 October from 6.30pm (discussion starts at 6.45pm). The Wax Child is available to buy from The Margate Bookshop with a 10% discount.

Wild Grace profiles nine of the women who spearheaded the modern dance movement, and in so doing, played their part in d...
14/10/2026

Wild Grace profiles nine of the women who spearheaded the modern dance movement, and in so doing, played their part in dismantling various boring old patriarchal ideas of how women should live, look and move through the world. From 19th century icons Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller to postwar dancer-choreographers Katherine Dunham and Pearl Primus, writer Sara Veale raises up the too-little-known stories of these subversive figures, revealing what we can learn from their artistry, integrity and disobedience.

Translated into English in its entirety for the first time, Wen Zhenheng's Treatise on Superfluous Things is the ultimat...
14/10/2026

Translated into English in its entirety for the first time, Wen Zhenheng's Treatise on Superfluous Things is the ultimate style guide to an elite bygone era that we can still find draw from today. This classic Chinese hymn to good taste, order and pared-back elegance in all things advises its reader to be 'ancient rather than fashionable, simple rather than merely clever, restrained rather than vulgarly ostentatious’, offering sage pointers on how to arrange books, drink tea, hang paintings and plant peach blossom trees.

A bold yet gentle exploration of ageing, healing and identity, Dean Atta's latest novel Big Man centres on Big, a Black ...
13/10/2026

A bold yet gentle exploration of ageing, healing and identity, Dean Atta's latest novel Big Man centres on Big, a Black British gay man living the second half of his life, and looking back on the first. Present-day Big lives quietly and wholesomely with his partner, Little, in East London, but it wasn't always thus. As a young man he came up in the clubs, nurtured by Mother, an African American trans woman who brought him into her house when he most needed a home. Big hasn't spoken to Mother in years, but on discovering she's releasing a memoir they come back into touch, and he finds himself face to face with long-repressed violation that throws up old traumas and new feelings.

The Margate Bookshop invites you to...SCENE CITY WITH RÓISÍN TAPPONITHURSDAY, 22 OCTOBERWriter and film programmer Róisí...
11/10/2026

The Margate Bookshop invites you to...

SCENE CITY WITH RÓISÍN TAPPONI
THURSDAY, 22 OCTOBER

Writer and film programmer Róisín Tapponi discusses her decadent debut novel Scene City, an insider’s tale of hedonism and identity amid the hollow gold of the London art world.

7-9PM FORT ROAD BAR

The effervescent first novel from film programmer and writer Róisín Tapponi, Scene City follows art history student Romy into the belly of the beast that is London’s commercial art world. At risk of becoming too caught up in the rarefied glamour of it all, she tries to earth herself by writing what she sees, and soon begins developing a storyline starring her own merry band of g**s... and a version of herself. Dynamic, smart and gossipy in the style of Babitz or Capote, Scene City is a book about authorship, authenticity and whether the search for meaning and the pursuit of pleasure are at all compatible.

Róisín Tapponi is an academic, curator and founder of Shasha Movies, an independent streaming platform for South-West Asian and North African film and video. As a writer and critic she has contributed to frieze, Artforum, The Guardian, Vogue and more, and has delivered talks on film at institutions such as BAFTA, Venice Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, CPH:DOX and Sheffield Doc Fest. She’ll be talking all-things Scene City in conversation with Margate’s own Robert Diament, host of the Talk Art podcast and Director of Carl Freedman Gallery and Counter Editions.

This event will be recorded for Talk Art Live podcast.

Booking essential. Free tickets available via Eventbrite – link in bio.

Address

2 Market Place
Margate
CT91ER

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 6pm
Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 6pm
Friday 10am - 6pm
Saturday 10am - 6pm
Sunday 10am - 4pm

Telephone

+441843791932

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