AN evening exploring craft, community and sustainability comes to The Bookery at 7pm on Wednesday, October 21 with Devon shoemaker and author Alison Hastie joining Vicky Jay in conversation to discuss her fascinating new memoir, Green Shoes: Forty Years of a Radical Women’s Craft Collective. This event is presented in partnership with Sustainable Crediton.

Coming of age in the early 1980s, Alison Hastie always knew she was different from the conventional young people around her. After a vivid dream instructed her to "make shoes", she embarked on a journey that would shape the next four decades of her life as co-founder of Green Shoes, a women’s collective shoemaking business based in Totnes.

In Green Shoes, Alison reflects on a life rooted in Dartmoor and shaped by craft, feminism, community and resilience. Through stories of friendship, motherhood, personal challenges and professional successes, she charts the evolution of Green Shoes while exploring the wider history and significance of shoemaking. The result is both a deeply personal memoir and a powerful celebration of traditional skills, local enterprise and community centred living.

Adding a special visual element to the evening, Alison will bring a selection of leather, tools and handcrafted Green Shoes to display, offering customers the opportunity to see first hand the craftsmanship, design and ethos that have earned the collective a devoted following over more than four decades.

Vicky Jay moved to Devon in 1981 to study at Dartington College of Arts, active in the women’s movement and regularly visited Totnes Women’s Centre where Green Shoes had their workshop. As a single parent she worked part-time at Green Shoes for 16 years whilst continuing her studies in counselling and psychotherapy.

Tickets: £4. Available from The Bookery or online at thebookery.org.uk.