Librarian's look at poverty in pandemic Leeds makes shortlist for national book awards

“I gave up writing as a serious pursuit about 16 years ago because when I was in my 20s I couldn’t handle all the rejections that trying to establish a writing career entails,” Stu says. “So I carried on writing but stopped trying to publish stuff.”

That all changed a few years ago, when he was drawn back to ‘serious writing’. The Covid pandemic hit soon after. “I think because it was such an unprecedented thing, I felt I needed to document it for posterity as much as anything else,” Stu says. And so he wrote.

In Spring 2020, with libraries closed, he was volunteering as a delivery driver for a Food Distribution Centre set up in Leeds to take food parcels to the homes of people who were self-isolating. When word got out about the service, people struggling on low incomes also began to ask for help and Stu found himself keeping diary notes about not only the unfolding pandemic but of life inside some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable communities in the city.

Ghost Signs - Poverty and the Pandemic became the result, an eyewitness account, published earlier this year, of the impact of the early days of the pandemic on those living in poverty. It was the first published book for Skipton-born Stu, who now lives in Meanwood and works as a librarian overseeing stock and reader development at Leeds City Council libraries.

Now the book has been shortlisted in the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2022, now in their seventh year. The shortlists include six categories curated by a panel of booksellers to be voted on by the public. Stu’s book is one of four in the non-fiction section, a category whose previous winners include Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty, Becoming by Michelle Obama and This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor by Adam Kay.

"It feels crass to celebrate as in an ideal world the book wouldn’t have to have been written,” says Stu. “In a way it’s the story of our time...There’s so much focus on poverty at the moment and how unaffordable life is even for people who are on a reasonably secure income, so it’s quite timely I think…

"I think it captures something of the essence of what everybody’s experiencing this year and I think it highlights how bad things already were and things have got worse since then (2020) and are going to carry on getting worse. It’s a snapshot of life of how hard the most vulnerable people already have it.

"It’s struck a chord with people when there’s so much anger with politicians, especially the current government and the way they seem wilfully blind to a lot of problems people are facing...They’ve been talking about cutting taxes for the rich and yet look at how people ‘at the bottom’ are having to live.”

To vote in the awards, visit www.nationalbooktokens.com/vote