It’s Literally Wednesday: Book Writers Who Are Booksellers
Dave | June 6, 2012In a previous blog I discussed booksellers who became book writers. This will turn the tables a bit.
Last week I asked about AJC Decatur Book Festival keynote speakers. AHID suggested Garrison Keillor, which I thought was marvelous. Keillor has been telling stories for nearly four decades (with one major interruption) on “A Prairie Home Companion,” creating an entire fake town “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” (It can be heard WABE (90.1 FM) at 6pm Saturdays and 10am Sundays.)
Keillor is also a gifted writer who has pounded out articles for magazines, a newspaper column, an advice column, a series of novels (most of which take place in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota), the screenplay for Robert Altman’s final film, and poetry collections.
Garrison is also a lover of literature who narrates “The Writer’s Almanac,” which can be heard daily on WABE at 10:55 a.m.
Just as significantly, six years ago Keillor opened Common Good Books, an independent bookstore in St. Paul, Minnesota. I love the idea of authors contributing to the literary world in this way and want to point out that Mr. Keillor is not alone.
Just across the river, award-winning author Louise Erdrich opened Birchbark Books and Native Arts in Minneapolis in 2000.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Larry McMurtry started Booked Up in Washington, D.C. in 1971 (since closed) and in tiny Archer, Texas (population 1,834) in 1988, which is one of the country’s largest rare and used bookstores.
Bestselling author (and Dylan enthusiast) Jonathan Lethem co-founded Red Gap Books, a used bookstore in Blue Hill, Maine in 2009. The author of Motherless Brooklyn also still resides in his native borough and in California where he has replaced the late David Foster Wallace as a creative writing professor at Pomona College. Which is to say that he probably isn’t in Blue Hill a lot.
Author Crystal Wilkinson opened The Wild Fig bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky in 2011.
Most recently, PEN/Faulkner Award winner Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto, co-opened Parnassus Books in Nashville last November. She obviously brings an author’s mentality to bookselling, which is a very good thing. Ms. Patchett was a guest on The Colbert Report earlier this year. This video is entertaining, inspirational, and well worth watching.
Then there is the granddaddy of them all. Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti co-founded San Francisco’s iconic City Lights bookstore in 1953. City Lights has been in operation for nearly 60 years; Ferlinghetti for 93.
Which author’s bookstore would you like to walk into? Keeping in mind that I’m a tad partial to writers of kids books, I’d be first in line at Jon Scieszka’s store if he ever opened one. It would be simultaneously bizarre and reverent and seriously fun.
Shameless Plug: Read Like A Grownup Day is on Friday, June 8th at Little Shop of Stories. We’ve always had adult fiction and nonfiction sections, and have been growing it more in the past couple of months. Now we want to show it off. This Friday only: all adult titles are 25% off. Woohooo!
This Week
Lindsey Hilsum, author of Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution, Wednesday, June 6th, 7:15 pm, Decatur Library Auditorium, sponsored by Georgia Center for the Book, free.
Claire Cook, author of Wallflower in Bloom, Monday, June 11th, 7:15 pm, Decatur Library Auditorium, sponsored by Georgia Center for the Book, free.
I would like to visit the two Twin Cities bookstores, partially because I love both Keillor and Erdrich as authors but also because I love that area.
I would love to browse Malcolm Gladwell’s bookstore.
RIP, Ray Bradbury…
Weren’t we just talking about him? I can’t remember which post that was.
Just last week the New Yorker published a short story by him. I liked it and now he is dead.
The music would be great at Haruki Murakami’s bookstore.
Very interesting to learn about all of those folks. All this time I thought I was in a unique position as a children’s author and bookstore owner. Our store is Dog-Eared Pages in Phoenix, AZ http://www.dogearedpagesusedbooks.com and my books are for kids ten and older. The Minstrel’s Tale trilogy. http://www.annaquesterly.com
Thanks for sharing!
Anna
Not on topic, but seeing how this is “Literary Wednesday” I thought this post would be appropriate: I just heard that Ray Bradbury died last night in California. His Fahrenheit 451 was my introduction to the science fiction genre, and I will forever love him for that!
You and millions of others. Fahrenheit 451 wasn’t just science fiction, it was a great political cautionary tale — much more accessible than Orwell’s 1984 and thus more popular with high schoolers (of which I was one).
I loved both, 451 and 1984 and have reread them over the years. Now that Ray is no longer with us, I think I’ll read it again.
Jonathan (of Red Gap Books) is in Blue Hill frequently in the summer–we often see him at the farmers market.