The Literary has become a central hub in downtown Champaign, Illinois, since it opened in 2021. Champaign-Urbana is a micro-urban college town about one hundred and thirty miles south of Chicago. I’ve lived here for 23 years. At first, it was a struggle—it’s safe to say that Champaign is significantly quieter than my native New York. Over the years, I have developed a deep appreciation for the community, for the town, and of course, for the University of Illinois, where I have served on the faculty as a Professor of Comparative and World Literature and the Director of the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies. The Literary has done a lot to enrich our community!
When Jaynie asked us to pick a local bookstore and interview the owner for BookBound, I immediately thought of The Literary! It’s not just a bookstore: it’s a café, a wine bar, a meeting place. They host book launches, knitting circles, children’s reading hour, and book clubs (and more!). I’ve had many writing group meetings at The Literary wherein we all discussed each other’s work whilst sipping wine or kombucha. I’ve spent many hours there with a cappuccino and my laptop, wrestling with my fiction or answering endless streams of email. There are couches, comfy chairs, stools, and proper tables so you can pick your spot. They also satisfy the urges of notebook addicts like me and my daughters, and we’ve often purchased sturdy blank ones or mugs or silly earrings. The Literary hosted the book launch for my first novel, Rare Stuff, during which I had the great pleasure to be in conversation with the inimitable Deke Weaver. The joint was bursting at the seams, and everyone enjoyed a glass or wine or other beverage as we chatted. It was a memorable evening for which I am super grateful!
On 5 February 2026, I sat down with Jenny Shima, The Literary’s owner. This interview has been edited for clarity.
Is there a connection with the community centered bakery and coffee shop, Hopscotch?
I started The Literary in 2021, when we thought the pandemic was over the first time and it was really exciting. I wanted to create it because I’d lived here for a few years and thanks to the pandemic, hadn’t made any friends. So I figured if I build it they will come, you know? We all had such a desperate need to learn how to reconnect again after that isolating experience, and I wanted to create the opportunity to share community again. When we opened our doors, we were under the impression that the pandemic was dying down and of course, three days after we opened our doors they said, ‘Just kidding Delta is now in existence and we’re going back to masks.’ Somehow we made it through, but when we opened, it was with Hopscotch Bakery. I’d never met the owner before and sort of impulsively I was like, ‘Hey, you’ve got a cute place. You’re doing good stuff. Let’s get together,’ and we did! They were with us providing coffee and food for a little under two years and then the owner moved to Boise and we started our own kitchen and café in their absence. I had never set out to open a restaurant, it just wasn’t in my life plan, but here we are and it turns out it’s really fun.
What kind of vibe were you seeking and maybe not finding in extant bookshops in the city?
I designed The Literary like my own home and with inspiration from places that I admire; I wanted this space to be warm. I wanted it to be comfortable. One of the gripes I have about the big box bookstores was that they have no place to sit and read the books, which is probably strategic because they want you to purchase and then leave. I wanted a place for people to soak up the books, to find out if it’s a match, before you take it home with you. Maybe while you’re here somebody else is reading a similar book and you strike up a conversation. It was also important to me that we had a lot of art in here to spark imagination and make sure that we’re representing a lot of different kinds of people and a lot of different experiences of reading.
Do you ever showcase local artists?
We do! Not as much as I would like to because we just don’t have a lot of space—our walls are covered in books for the most part!—but we do a tiny art show every year on our large wall in the café. We have an original mural by Leslie Kimble on that wall now and she did a great job. It’s not much, but that’s what we’re able to do with our space and it’s a lovely way to bring art and books together.
Awesome! What kind of books do you like?
Oh my gosh, I have historically loved capital L literature but I have more recently fallen in love with fantasy books. Most recently, I’ve loved Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. Each book is about one thousand pages and it reads forever which I love. There’s no such thing a book that’s too big in my opinion. I also loved the My Brilliant Friend series by Elena Ferrante—I’ve never read writing like hers. What is the magic behind her pen? Every sentence is just impactful, incredible. I lived in Louisville when I was reading that series and I read the first book while I was very, very pregnant during a rare snowstorm. When I finished the first book I put on my boots—I couldn’t drive because it was too snowy—and walked to the independent bookstore, Carmichaels, and got the second book because I couldn’t wait. I had to read it right away! I’ve also made a point of trying to read outside my genre and I surprised myself with a Western, Lonesome Dove, that I absolutely fell in love with. It was such a beautiful story, it’s well written and the characters have incredible development. I’m reading Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore right now, I’m only just beginning—it’s a big book!
Are there any book clubs that The Literary hosts?
Oh yes, we have a lot of book clubs—our booksellers each host a book club every month and they choose any book they like. Some book clubs are interest-based, for example, we have a science fiction/fantasy book club that always reads a different title in that genre. It’s a lot of fun. We have a book buyer here whose name is Cale, and their job title is Book Wizard; they choose all the books that we have. This used to be my role but I’m really happy to pass the torch because they have a lot more time to dedicate to curating our collection. We try hard to respond to what the community is looking for when we choose books and we also rely on our special orders. We have a lot of people who order books that we don’t have in the shop and that’s how we meet a lot of cool new books that were not our radar. Many of them end up on our shelves!
Good to know! I’ve special ordered a couple of books through The Literary because I decided a long time ago that I would never use a certain big online retailer again. I closed my account completely. So, I special order often, but I didn’t realize that it could impact the choices an independent bookstore makes. Readers, take note! Your choices matter!
When we pick up a special order we are often like, ‘Oh my God, this looks amazing!’ So, our community is actively curating our collection as well, which is really kind of great.
Yes, that’s really awesome! So, then my next question is about Champaign: do you feel like The Literary is very specific to this town or is it a sort of recipe that could be exported anywhere? Or does it thrive on its interface with this community?
I don’t know. I will know more if we open a second store—we are not thinking of doing anything right now; I think my instinct is that we’ve become very specific to Champaign, our collection is reflective of our community and we do so much with our local organizations and nonprofits that I’d imagine we’re quite Champaign specific at this point. I’d imagine the reading tastes would be different in another place; it’s something I’m curious about. For example, the advice when you open a new bookstore is to have a huge romance section because romance readers keep your doors open and that’s what I did when I opened, but it didn’t move that well. Turns out sci-fi/fantasy is the section that resonates with so many people in Champaign-Urbana—that is one of our biggest sections.
I am seeing lots of people here at all your book launches and book talks; recently I came to Gus Woods’ launch of Class Warfare in Black Atlanta and I could barely fit in the door! It’s amazing when you draw such a big crowd—that was lovely to see people really coming out for those things!
They do! We try really hard to support local authors as well as we can. We’re always trying to iterate and get better at everything we do and we have a dedicated events person who runs all of our events.
All the ones I’ve been to have been absolutely great. OK, next topic! How do you see the literary world with the idea floating around that people aren’t reading or that people’s attention spans are atrophying. I feel like I see the opposite, especially with bookstores like this. People are turning away from big online shopping outlets. People are in local stores. I’ve been living here for 23 years but I’m from New York City, and when I go to the Strand or McNally Jackson they are packed with people looking, browsing, reading, and I’m just curious what do you think? Are you seeing a ballooning of reading?
That is such an interesting question; I think both can be true. I think that in general, our attention spans are a whole lot shorter than they were in the ’90s. This change is by necessity and how we live our lives and the technology with which we interface. But I think it’s also true that there has been a massive shift to exactly what we’re talking about: supporting small businesses, buying things that are aligned with our values, and having an intentionality about what you’re reading and what you’re exposing yourself to and the choices that you’re making. Purchasing is resistance and choosing where your money goes is a political thing and I think it’s a really positive change. It gives me a lot of hope for the counter measures that are happening against our very centralized monopolistic economy and culture. For example, Indie Bookstore Day has usually been a nice day for us, but it’s not been tremendously remarkable, but last year was huge. I mean, our Book Wizard and our General Manager and I spent the whole day crying because of the incredible turnout we had that day. Our community came out and supported us and bought a ton of books and it was a direct reaction to an online retailer having their major book sale during Indie Bookstore Day. It was a very meaningful act of resistance and investment in something that belongs to this community.
Is there anything else you’d like to share about The Literary? Maybe what you’re hoping for in the future?
I’ve been feeling a lot of deep gratitude for this community. It’s hard to run a bookstore—bookstores operate on 10% smaller margins than any other retailer just right off the bat; it’s the only industry where the prices of the product are printed on the back. Your margins are decided not by you, but by the publisher. The fact that we’re still here in spite of that is huge and all thanks to our community. And then when you have instances like when SNAP Benefits were canceled and we decided to donate meals to people who were suffering—we invited the community to join us and they raised nearly $20,000 in two weeks—I never ever dreamed that was possible. When the community shows up for each other it’s the thread of hope that we all need. It continues to happen over and over again: there’s so much goodness that I see in the people who come here. It’s those lovely people who are not only helping us choose our books through their special orders, they’re also shaping this little shop into what they want it to be. It’s been fun to watch it evolve, I also love how little control I have had over how it grows and what it becomes. It’s been incredible. I can’t wait to see what happens next and my hands are off the wheel. We are just here responding.
It’s February, Black History month, and I see a Frederick Douglass biography prominently displayed along several other books that resonate. You’re responding.
I’m just grateful for this community and you know we’re in turbulent times, but there is a very strong counterculture out there that’s thriving.
Yes!
So, you have another novel coming out?
Yes! It’s called Epiphany’s Lament and it will be out next year (2027) with Regal House Publishing—I’m very excited! It tells the story of a woman whose mother survived a Kindertransport so she has all sorts of shadows behind her; at the start of the novel Poppy is living in New York, scraping by as a piano refinisher, when she gets a phone call from her grandmother, in England. Poppy returns to her hometown which is near a former Vietnamese Refugee Center where she and her mother and grandmother had volunteered and she begins to search for a painting of an enslaved man that had been looted from her mother’s family. The painting may (or may not!) be hidden in the Refugee Center and the main plot revolves around Poppy and the FBI Art Crime Agent, Max (who naturally is quite cute), searching for the painting and encountering buried histories along the way.
Oh wow, you’ve piqued my interest and I look forward to reading it!
Thank you and thank you so much for this wonderful conversation!
Brett Ashley Kaplan directs the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, Memory Studies and is a Professor of Comparative and World Literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her novel, Epiphany’s Lament, is forthcoming with Regal House Press in 2027. Please find more at brettashleykaplan.com
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