Bookstores, Publishers, and Authors: Oh my!
Everyone has a role in the literary ecosystem
I’m continually fascinated by the turns this journey has taken over the past few years—settling back among our home-places, building our family, growing my own writing career, starting the press. On all fronts, it has been many things—but never boring.
Learning how to open the press and function as a business has taught me a lot while also reinforcing the various ways my past experiences and skill sets have prepared me for this calling I never expected. For I really see it that way: as a vocation. It keeps surprising me how much I feel like this role is a culmination of so many things I spent years trying to find without knowing what I wanted, and I’m ever more grateful for the writers and readers who have entrusted this growing community to us.
But this post is really supposed to be about bookstores. At least, I think that’s what I set out to talk about this month; sometimes my brain makes more connections than I can keep up with. Before I ever seriously considered anything as interesting and labor-intensive as book publishing, I spent a lot of time in bookstores of all kinds. Before I realized we were dating, Michael and I would hang around them together. We took our engagement photos at Dickson Street Bookshop up in Fayetteville before we had any idea we’d end up in Arkansas. Most of our ideas of fun in Chicago revolved around days spent hunting books. We’ve planned many a trip around bookstores. In short, they have always been a big part of our lives.