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Hello and welcome to new subscribers! I’m writing mid-PNW tour month to check in. I will write more about the Tacoma, Seattle, and Olympia launches in my next newsletter—each event was so wonderful and special. But I’m also writing today to hype all these indie bookstores I visited IN ONE DAY.
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How did I, a self-proclaimed closet introvert, come to visit 12 bookstores in one day?
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Well, I do love independent bookstores. I have spent a LOT of hours in these stores. Josh and I even planned our grad student honeymoon around indie bookstores and music stores. (For the most part, we stayed in motels and splurged on fancy meals, music, and books. But we did stay in a couple of beautiful places, too.)
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However, Kurtis Lowe, the PNW sales rep for UW Press, is also an indie bookstores and indie press believer. He arranged the tour, making sure to contact each store well in advance of our visit, introducing me to the wonderful owners and staff at each stop. It was an amazing day. We had a great time. All the beautiful covers, colors, spaces! All the additions to my bookmark collection! All the clean well-lit places for books! (And many tables for AANHPI month!) (on Instagram, I’m at @tamikonimura and you can see the book “in the wild.”)
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By the end of the day I was even more in love with the indie book world. I loved seeing what was so carefully selected and curated for each neighborhood, each place. I was even more in love with these people and places designed to make people feel cared for and seen and held.
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My one regret? I couldn’t shop! But I look forward to going back to all of these places.
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I have a special love for the Third Place Books chain—I wrote my dissertation at Third Place Ravenna. I appreciate that there’s a dedicated cafe or place to eat at each one, and the curation at each store is clearly apparent. “I know someone who will really like this book,” said a bookseller at Seward Park.
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Wonderful to meet the staff at Island Books, a store that was born the same year as I was (1973)! I don’t make it over to Mercer Island very often, so it was great to visit the store that describes itself as a place “where booksellers remember who you are and the kind of books you read.”
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A new-to-me bookstore! Got to chat with owner Eric Judy and his partner Desiree, whose eye for design makes the store a lovely space to be.
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This new-to-me bookstore is such a welcoming space. I think it opened well after Josh and I moved from Seattle to Tacoma. Owners Becky and Kevin were happy to chat about books, and they have a record player with records behind the register: a good sign for me.
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I’ve written books (WE HEREBY REFUSE) and exhibits (RESISTERS) for the Wing, so it was like a homecoming to sign books for the store. Plus, they have other great things like Asian themed cards, stickers and accessories.
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One of my happy places—I used to visit the SF branch for years too. Books, but also wonderful stationery, pens, stuffies, and stickers for DAYS. So excited to know my book will be here!
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Elliott Bay was the first bookstore I visited when I visited Seattle, and it was in Pioneer Square then. I’ve been to SO many events here in Capitol Hill. And I was so moved to see my book top left in the Northwest Authors shelf, facing the register! Longtime bookseller and buyer Rick Simonsen is a huge supporter of the book and I’m so thrilled they had a lot of copies. Bonus: the store has a little case just called “Signing Pens” for authors to use.
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Owner Tom Nissley and I overlapped at UW by a year, though he was in the MFA and I was in the MA/PhD program. Love that this store has two signs on opposing walls: “TRUE” and “MADE-UP.” With his generosity and unerring eye for literary taste, Kurtis gifted me a copy of Tom’s delightful book THE PHINNEY BY POST BOOK, which is a compilation of short recommendation essays that Tom writes for the store’s subscription program. I’m enjoying it.
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Though Secret Garden is primarily a children’s bookstore, they also carry a few select titles for grownups. I was happy to learn that they had already sold most of their copies of my book!—but I got to sign one copy and hand-sold the other to bookseller Valerie!
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The last stop on our tour! Josh and I used to visit this one a lot, since we lived in Queen Anne. Small and cozy and inviting. Loved meeting the owner and staff there, too!
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If you can’t afford a copy of the book, which I understand, please consider requesting it or placing a hold on it at your local public library. Usually there is an online form you fill out with some information to request a title, but your librarians would also probably be happy to help you make a request. All of it helps me and the book!
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Thank you as always for being part of the community that is catching the book as it comes into the wider world. So amazing to see the book on the shelves of so many wonderful places.
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For an archive of my past newsletters, please visit my archive page.
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