This section sheds light upon the post-war context of Nottingham’s multicultural, working-class communities, before exploring their dynamic, interactive and accessible literary creations. Particular emphasis is placed on African Caribbean and white British authors through readings of selected Nottingham texts. This introduction contextualises ‘Notts’ cultural expression as diverse as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958); a digital app that immerses walkers in the streets of Sillitoe’s fiction; the Afrocentric (out)spoken word collective ‘Blackdrop’; and a publicly funded campaign to celebrate the city’s literary rebels. By mapping a brief microhistory at the intersection of Nottingham’s white working-class and African Caribbean communities, it explore how commonalities and differences of experience manifest in the city’s cohesive, yet heterogenous range of literary voices.