The Exchange Book Club: The Overstory

Join The Exchange Book Club in partnership with Lyza Lawal, founder of Blacklore UK. Together, we’ll celebrate a list of amazing books featuring powerful stories inspired by the arts and sciences behind our exhibition Seeing the Sun.

Expect lively conversation, fresh perspectives, and a welcoming space in the heart of the city.

This month's book

The next book on our TBR (to-be-read) list is The Overstory by Richard Powers.

Book synopsis: 

"The Overstory is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of - and paean to - the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe."

Tickets

Tickets for this book club are £5 per person, which includes entry to the session and a drink.

To make our book club as accessible as possible, we are also offering a limited number of free Solidarity tickets. For more information on Solidarity tickets, please visit our ticketing information page.

Buy the book!

Our official bookselling partner is The Heath Bookshop.

The Heath Bookshop is a vibrant, award-winning, independent bookshop in the heart of Kings Heath in Birmingham. The Heath Bookshop is for everyone and anyone, offering a safe community space with a diverse range of books, delicious hot and cold drinks, and a much-loved Kate Bush coffee table. The Heath Bookshop won Independent Bookshop of the Year 2025, which was announced at the British Book Awards in May of this year.

To place an order with The Heath Bookshop, head to Bookshop.org or contact them directly by email at orders@theheathbookshop.co.uk.

Facilities & accessibility

We’re committed to making The Exchange as welcoming and accessible as possible. There’s step-free access and accessible toilets on all floors, plus a Changing Places toilet on the basement level. Guide dogs and assistance animals are always welcome. If you have any questions about access, just drop us an email at engage@contacts.bham.ac.uk.

Presented as part of the UK's National Year of Reading 2026.