Black Reading Group

On being shortlisted:
"It is like being in Heaven with the angels; thank you Penguin/Orange team for making us all feel so special."

Name: Black Reading Group

Where from: Handsworth, Birmingham

Size of group (male/female): 45 members (40% men, 60% women)

How long you’ve been meeting: Since 2001

Where you meet: Mostly at Walsall Central Library

What makes your reading group special:

The Black Reading Group plays a crucial role in people’s lives by:
· Improving people’s quality of life and well-being by reading
· Helping people to understand themselves and the world around them
· Giving a sense of cultural identity
· Empowering them by providing information  and new perspectives
· Broadening the mind, “feeding the imagination” and building tolerance by the diversity of reading choices
· Bringing people together who would never have come together usually.

The Black Reading Group supports the development of literacy for all and develops the confidence to buy and borrow books from libraries and bookshops, and to read. There is an atmosphere in the group to encourage diversity in reading and writing. The reading group is seen as a creative, active and positive occupation for all.  This is the first reading group in the country to have been published as a group, and the Black Reading Group are an award-winning group.

The group has been featured in many newspapers around the country, but our pride and joy was when we were shown in our national newspaper, the Sunday Express, with our new book club programme called Dis n Dat. We were also invited onto the new exciting book club programme called Page Turners on BBC 1, where we looked at and read Purple Hibiscus and The Icarus Girl. We enjoy indulging in diversity and would love the VIP treatment, especially meeting a Penguin author and celebrities.

We have author visits and workshops where we all learn from each other. You do not have to be a black person to join the group or to come along to the meetings, for it is a multicultural group dealing with diversity in reading and writing, and sharing these experiences.