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Borderlands Books: The Store Its Readers Refused to Lose

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by Scott Lambridis

For years, a man named Michael came into Borderlands Books in San Francisco. He lived in residential hotels and worked occasionally as a book scout, finding used books to sell around the city. He loved science fiction, especially Fritz Leiber, and he liked to talk about it. Sometimes at length.

Jeremy Lassen, who has worked at Borderlands for nearly three decades, remembers Michael clearly. The store’s cat would often curl into his lap while he sat reading quietly in the corner.

Then one day a letter arrived. Michael had moved to Florida and learned he had a brain tumor. In the letter he apologized if he had ever behaved strangely in the store. But mostly he wanted to say thank you. Being able to sit in Borderlands with a book and a cat in his lap, he wrote, had been one of the most important things in his life during that time.

Before Borderlands was a bookstore people rallied to save, it was a place that made room for people like Michael. The store began in 1997 when Alan Beatts, a lifelong science fiction reader, looked around the Bay Area and decided the genre deserved a better kind of bookstore. Many independents at the time still carried the cluttered aesthetic of the 1970s: dim lighting, dusty shelves, books stacked wherever they would fit.

Beatts imagined something else: a clean, well-lit, carefully organized bookstore devoted entirely to science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Jeremy met him while working at another indie bookstore in the Bay Area. After months of showing up every Sunday as a customer, Beatts finally told him, “You’re in here all the time anyway—want a job?”

He’s been there ever since.

From the beginning, Borderlands made a few deliberate choices. The store would stay focused on books. No figurines, toys, or novelty merchandise competing for shelf space. It would skip media tie-ins and franchise novels entirely. If a book didn’t stand on its own as literature, it didn’t belong.

“That shelf space could be more books,” Jeremy told me.

The store’s atmosphere reflects the same philosophy. Wooden fixtures, vintage rugs, and refinished hardwood floors give it a quiet, crafted feel with much of the work done by Beatts himself. The effect is welcoming but serious, a place designed for readers rather than collectors of memorabilia.

But survival in San Francisco has required more than good taste. Borderlands has been forced to move several times as landlords changed and rents rose. At one point, a minimum wage increase threatened to close the store entirely. When Beatts explained the numbers, customers responded with a simple question: could they help? They could. A few hundred patrons began contributing a few hundred dollars a year. It became enough to sustain the store for the next decade.

More recently, the community helped again. After years of lease instability, Borderlands borrowed the money to purchase its own building, not from a commercial bank but from readers who wanted the store to remain. It’s fitting that their logo is the ouroboros. Like the snake eating its own tail, there’s a recursive continuity at Borderlands, where customers sustain the store that, in turn, sustains them in a perpetual cycle of renewal. It also makes Michael’s story feel less like an anecdote than an explanation. A bookstore that gives people a place to belong will eventually find that it belongs to them, too.

Scott Lambridis

Scott Lambridis is a novelist based in Bellingham, Washington. A former indie press founder, performance series organizer, olive farmer, and progressive rocker, he studied neurobiology at the University of Virginia, earned an MFA from San Francisco State University, and read a book from every country in the world. His debut novel, St. Ulphia’s Dead, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on July 7, 2026. Learn more at scottlambridis.com 

Fabulosa Books: The Castro’s Living Room

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by Scott Lambridis

A young man from Texas walked into Fabulosa Books, looked at the wall of queer titles, and started crying. “Is this all gay stuff?” he asked. When an employee named Becka told him yes, the young man asked if he could hug her. Moments like that, owner Alvin Orloff says, are why the bookstore exists. “People are traumatized,” he told me. “It’s really important for them to be able to buy queer stuff in public and see it all there.” 

Fabulosa Books sits on Castro Street, in the space once occupied by A Different Light, the legendary queer bookstore that helped anchor the neighborhood through the AIDS crisis. When that store closed in 2011, the Castro went five years without a bookstore at all.

Orloff had been working for years at Dog Eared Books on Valencia Street, one of San Francisco’s beloved literary hubs. I first met him there when he hosted a monthly NYRB Classics book club I was part of. In 2016 he helped open a Dog Eared branch in the old A Different Light location, bringing a bookstore back to the Castro—and bringing with it the kind of literary curation he loved: small presses, forgotten classics, and books that would never appear in an airport kiosk. 

Then, in 2019, at the release party for Orloff’s own memoir, his boss leaned over and made an offer. Did he want to buy the store? Orloff said yes. Then the pandemic shut everything down. “I was leaving the house to go file the papers,” he said, laughing. “And City Hall closed.”

For a while, the idea stalled. Castro Street, he says, was “dead, dead, dead.” But two years later, staring down his 60th birthday, he decided to go for it. “Now or never,” he said. “I’ve got to become a bookstore magnate.”

In 2021 he bought the store and renamed it Fabulosa Books. At first, the shop wasn’t especially LGBTQ-focused. But after the 2016 election and a noticeable shift in national rhetoric, Orloff began expanding the store’s queer inventory. What started as maybe 10 or 15 percent of the stock grew to more than half.

“The more homophobic society becomes,” he said, “the more people circle the wagons and reclaim their identities.” Today, the store’s identity is unmistakable. The LGBTQ section greets visitors right at the front door. The space itself is bright and airy—more open than Dog Eared’s famously packed Valencia shop—with local art on the walls and a small corner of stickers, buttons, and postcards for tourists or anyone who wants a keepsake they can slip into a carry-on.

Fabulosa has to wear two hats at once: the Castro’s queer bookstore and its only general neighborhood bookstore. That means stocking everything from queer memoirs to popular fiction to obscure literary gems. Orloff doesn’t mind the balancing act. “You can’t take your parents to the gay bar,” he said. “But you can bring them to the bookstore.” Couples wander in on dates. Tourists make pilgrimages after reading Tales of the City. Parents sometimes bring newly out kids. “They come in slightly freaked out,” he said, “and leave slightly less freaked out.” 

That moment between Becka and the young man from Texas helped spur her to start Books Not Bans, a nonprofit hosted by Fabulosa that sends banned books to LGBTQ+ organizations in conservative areas.

The business realities remain challenging—rents, online shopping, the shrinking culture of public literary events—but Orloff approaches it with both realism and humor. “I’m not in charge of whether people want a robust literary culture,” he said. “What I can do is make this bookstore as appealing as I possibly can.”

Some things carry forward. “We still do NYRB Classics,” he told me. “We’ve got a shelf.” It’s one of those quiet throughlines from the book club I knew at Dog Eared to the store he runs now.

In a neighborhood built on visibility, Fabulosa has become exactly what the Castro has always needed.  Like it was for that young man from Texas, it’s more than a shop. It’s a place where you can browse, talk books, and maybe recognize someone else who understands why it matters.

Scott Lambridis

Scott Lambridis is a novelist based in Bellingham, Washington. A former indie press founder, performance series organizer, olive farmer, and progressive rocker, he studied neurobiology at the University of Virginia, earned an MFA from San Francisco State University, and read a book from every country in the world. His debut novel, St. Ulphia’s Dead, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on July 7, 2026. Learn more at scottlambridis.com 

Tsunami Books — A Beloved Bookstore Moves to Buy the Building

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by Amalia Gladhart

Over the course of thirty years, Tsunami Books in Eugene, Oregon, has hosted thousands of readings, theater revues, writers’ workshops, and concerts. The eclectic stock includes new and used books, with a strong selection of local authors; anything you can’t find, they’ll gladly order. It’s my neighborhood bookstore. I’ve attended readings, listened to music, and read from the stage myself.

Murals, sale racks, and a glorious fig tree frame the entrance. Inside, the light is warm and comfortable. There’s a welcoming quiet, the scent of beeswax from a shelf of candles, the up and down hum of conversation among browsers and staff. Kept afloat by a talented, hardworking crew of worker-owners, Tsunami has enjoyed unusual community support and investment. Now, in addition to a full calendar of music and book events and publication projects, co-founder and general manager Scott Landfield is leading an effort to buy the building.

Scott and I sat down on the stage—built, like the surrounding shelves, from gorgeous recycled lumber—to talk about Tsunami past and present. It’s been thirty years. It’s been a struggle, every month, scrapping for rent. At the start, they occupied only the front of the building. In 1998, they were told they had to take over the whole building or move out. The back half, a former grocery warehouse with two inches of standing water on the floor, needed extensive remodeling.

The recycled lumber used to build the shelves and stage is a clear point of pride for Scott. Schools and colleges across Oregon and Washington were pulling out their wooden gymnasium bleachers, replacing them with plastic or aluminum. Wood from some thirty-five schools is incorporated, as well as Lane County native wood.

There’s a lot to be proud of. Over 5000 events and activities. Musicians who come praise the acoustics. Scott has been active in making the street more pedestrian friendly and hospitable to business, convincing the city to install a traffic light and reduce the speed limit. Tsunami Press has published a couple of books. Their second book, Bookstore Clerks and Significant Others, got a starred review from Kirkus, and Kirkus picked it one of the top 100 indie press books of 2024. They’ve hosted a lot of wakes, Scott told me, including a living wake for a man in his nineties; they had to bring in a hospital bed. They’ve hosted three weddings.

And the community. “The thing about this place is the way the community has stepped up, so many times,” Scott said. The first round came in 2005. Burnt out and considering bankruptcy, Tsunami announced a going out of business sale, aiming to sell everything and get out of debt. Instead, a trio of community members offered a $35,000 stake if they’d keep the store open. At that point, Tsunami established a Neighborhood Shareholder Corporation. Shares were limited, with consensus required to move any shares. When the building owner later decided to sell, giving Scott thirty days to come up with the purchase price, a local developer stepped in at the last minute to buy the property, allowing the store to continue for two years on a handshake agreement. When it came time to sign a new lease, however, Scott didn’t own a house he could put up as collateral—a standard requirement—so he was asked to place $302,000 in an escrow account. That led to the second big fundraising push. Scott created a form of local crowdfunding that quickly raised more than was needed (the overage immediately returned to donors).

Why try to buy the building now? There are a few reasons. After thirty years, they’ve paid almost two million in rent. It feels like time. They’ve been able to hire and retain a skilled and imaginative staff, yet the crew, despite earning a respectable hourly rate, lack health insurance; none of them are homeowners. Scott takes home less than minimum wage. The current building owner has been decent, has made accommodations, but rent is still a stretch. A new partnership with the Eugene Foundation, supporting the store’s arts events (not rent or payroll), got people thinking about the possibility of a nonprofit ownership structure. [https://www.eugeneparksfoundation.org]

Most of all, the initiative is a response to hard times, to war and frustration; it’s a move to do something proactive. Last year was difficult. When Scott wrote an article in the Eugene Weekly about buying local during hard times, supporting your favorite local businesses, business took off for about two months. That’s when the Parks Foundation came in.

Scott choked up when he talked about being in the store the Saturday after the war in Iran broke out, grappling with the senseless deaths of so many girls when their school was bombed. It hit him hard. And at the same time, the store was packed. Scott told me it was like COVID, as if people got a notice: time to get some groceries, get some books, and hang out at home for a while. It was three days of worried customers looking for books and some kind of reassurance. People needed to be together, needed to laugh. He described it as a weird form of hysteria: on the one hand, his grief and anger at the war; on the other, the urge to comfort people, put them in a good mood. “It’s best if hysteria leads to hysterical laughter,” he said. “Some of the best one liners I’ve ever had in my life, and not about the system, not about the war, none of that stuff. So there was a lot of laughter in the building.” But after three days—three days of record sales— it was too much. What could we do? he asked himself. Tsunami had to do something.

Scott announced his intention to buy the building. He got permission from the other bookstore owners. The goal: keep a key place of property in music and arts. Then he built a tip box. The plan was to put out the tip box for thirty days while they figured out what to do next. To buy the building, Tsunami would need to raise a million dollars.

The box, built using wood scraps from six different sets of grade school bleachers, raised $14,000 in thirty days. The idea caught on—now people come into the store excited, asking how the purchase effort is going. They want to take part, join in.

The next step is a GoFundMe, slated to go live on May 1. Scott hopes to bring in $5 or $10 each from a hundred thousand people. If they can raise a solid chunk in small donations, he’s optimistic he can find a few larger donors. A successful purchase will include a legal covenant, one that will keep the property in books, music, and the arts in perpetuity. If it changes hands, the covenant goes with it. Nothing will come out of the GoFundMe until it’s clear a deal is going forward—if they can’t raise enough, everything will be refunded.

Why might readers beyond Eugene be moved to contribute? Because of that promise. Because of community, art, survival. Worker-owners. Laughter in the face of grief and frustration. Musicians from twenty-five countries playing their songs and telling their stories. Poets reading their poems.

What’s Scott looking forward to? Reasons to stay active for another ten years. Staffer Emily Poole’s book is coming out in September and they plan to fill the building with artwork. She’s also working on the cover for a second Tsunami anthology. There’s a secret stash of unpublished Ken Kesey work, other local treasures Scott has an eye on.

“We wanted to come up with a big idea,” Scott told me, “but the big idea came up with us. We have built a country where we can rest on our laurels very well. Very well. But we need to be proactive. You don’t create world peace by creating a department of war. Keeping a key piece of property in simple arts, in music and books, is what we can do here.”

He concludes, “It’s a counter-offensive. I’m not using the term war. It’s not a battle. It’s just people getting by in the world.” He thinks, ultimately, that’s what a great many people are looking for. People who want to read books, hear music, and go home to a roof over their heads.

Amalia Gladhart is a writer and translator in Oregon. A former bookseller—both new and used—she is always on the lookout for a good indie bookstore. Her novel, Edge Pieces, is forthcoming from Regal House in spring, 2028. Learn more and subscribe to her newsletter at amaliagladhart.com.

Kepler’s Books: Building a Bookstore Around Its People

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by Scott Lambridis

Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park has the reputation of an institution. Founded in the 1950s by peace activist Roy Kepler, it was once a gathering place for Beat thinkers, Stanford students, and even early performances by the Grateful Dead.

But when I sat down with Community Engagement Officer (CEO) Praveen Madan last year, that history wasn’t what stayed with me most. What stood out was a simple idea: Kepler’s isn’t trying to build the best bookstore around books. It’s trying to build the best bookstore around its people.

When Praveen first became involved with Kepler’s, he came from the corporate world and had never run a bookstore before. The store had faced closure before—most dramatically in 2005, when news of the shutdown sparked protests and drew thousands into the plaza outside.

By the time Praveen arrived in late 2011, the situation was quieter but no less urgent. The board had again decided to close the store, this time before the news had spread publicly. What followed wasn’t a public outcry, but months of behind-the-scenes work: restructuring debts, raising funds, and reimagining what the bookstore could be. The message, even then, was clear: this place mattered.

Soon Praveen found himself stepping into the vacuum of leadership. “There wasn’t really an owner,” he told me. “They just expected me to run it.”

What followed was less a rescue than a reinvention.

Praveen believes the real competitive advantage of an independent bookstore isn’t price, inventory size, or logistics. It’s the staff. “Our biggest asset is our people,” he explained. The booksellers are the first line of curation—the people who decide what appears on the shelves and what gets recommended to readers.

And at Kepler’s, that curation shows. Though the store itself isn’t enormous, almost every shelf intrigues: literature in translation, unusual small-press titles, books about nonviolence or sustainability, unexpected staff picks.

Praveen described a constant gravitational pull in bookselling. If you’re not careful, the catalogs of the biggest publishers can quietly take over your shelves. “They have the big sales teams, the big titles,” he said. “If you’re not paying attention, the Big Five will consume your store.” Kepler’s fights that gravity intentionally, highlighting independent presses, diverse voices, and books that might otherwise be overlooked.

One bookseller, Jasmine, described their approach this way: they feature “not the sparkly famous person book for kids, the beautiful one that you’ll love in 50 years.”

They pay attention to what people want, but also to what they believe people might need. A good bookstore finds the balance between both. Each year they even publish a holiday list of 80 staff recommendations, a customer favorite.

But building a staff capable of that kind of curation requires something bookstores have historically struggled to offer: decent wages.

So Kepler’s made an unusual decision. Instead of maximizing profit, they decided to maximize wages. The store aims to devote roughly 35% of its revenue to staff compensation, far higher than the industry norm.

To make that work, they experimented with creative solutions: a voluntary living-wage surcharge, a membership program, and perhaps most significantly, a structural innovation. Kepler’s spun off its extensive author-events program into a nonprofit—the Kepler’s Literary Foundation—so the bookstore itself wouldn’t have to subsidize those events with retail profits.

The result is a hybrid model that has drawn attention from bookstores across the country, and the Reimagine Bookstores campaign, which Praveen helps lead.

Standing in the store, watching customers browse shelves curated by booksellers who love what they do and feel well-supported, the logic seems obvious. If you want a great bookstore, you start by taking care of its people. 

Scott Lambridis

Scott Lambridis is a novelist based in Bellingham, Washington. A former indie press founder, performance series organizer, olive farmer, and progressive rocker, he studied neurobiology at the University of Virginia, earned an MFA from San Francisco State University, and read a book from every country in the world. His debut novel, St. Ulphia’s Dead, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on July 7, 2026. Learn more at scottlambridis.com 

Green Apple Books: A Thousand Small Improvements

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by Scott Lambridis

I arrived at Green Apple Books as they were opening for the day. Staff were rolling carts of sale books onto Clement Street, those irresistible sidewalk stacks I had to convince myself to ignore. 

Inside, the store feels a little like an oversized San Francisco apartment that somehow kept expanding over the years. The floors change beneath your feet. Hallways narrow and widen. Odd-sized stairs appear and disappear. The layout twists and turns in multiple dimensions, unified only by the bookshelves and, perched high on top, a dizzying array of art and strange artifacts. There’s a sense that if you turned away for a moment, something might shift.

Pete Mulvihill, one of the store’s owners, led me through the maze. We settled into a pair of chairs upstairs in the philosophy section, appropriately under reconstruction. Green Apple is, at its core, the result of steady adaptation. 

The original owner opened the shop while working for United Airlines, running it only on weekends at first. “This used to be an apartment,” Pete told me. “He just gutted it and put in bookshelves. Cut a hole in the wall.” Over time, the store expanded into neighboring spaces, something that would be far harder to do today. 

From the beginning, the philosophy was to respond to readers. “Sell more of what’s selling,” Pete said, recalling the founder’s advice. 

But that instinct has always been in tension with something else: curation.

“Bad books hide good books,” he said.

Green Apple is legendary among hardcore readers for its collection. Every time I visit, the shelves overflow with titles from my to-read list, and even the briefest of browsing yields new gems. Featured sections like Customer Favorites, the Green Apple Hall of Fame, and 50 Years of Green Apple show the glory of not just their lineage but the taste of the curators. 

That’s the point. If you have to sift through noise to find something worthwhile, the whole experience breaks down. 

That balance between responsiveness and discernment is shaped as much by economics as by taste.

Books have fixed prices. Margins are thin. Rent and labor costs in San Francisco are a constant challenge. “If publishers gave us five percent more,” Pete said, “there’d be twice as many bookstores.” And Amazon, of course, is always there, training customers to expect speed and discounts that independent stores simply can’t match. 

So survival comes down to all the other decisions. 

Used books help, though they require more labor, each one bought, evaluated, and priced by hand. Staff curate deeply, sometimes sourcing titles from overseas or working directly with tiny publishers. “We’ll go out of our way for something special,” Pete said. “Even if I have to put it on a credit card.” 

The store also thinks beyond the transaction. Pete helped found San Francisco’s “Local First” initiative, built around a simple idea: shopping locally keeps money circulating locally. Studies showed that roughly 62% of a bookstore purchase stays in the community—compared to effectively none with Amazon. Green Apple has leaned into that ethos, supporting neighborhood events, street improvements, and the kind of independent commercial fabric that Clement Street still manages to sustain.

And then there are the thousand small experiments. 

Some are subtle, such as shifting shelf space, refining sections, adjusting inventory. Others are more direct. Pete described one recent success: “a staff member suggested ‘dad-style’ baseball caps, and they sold so quickly that we ended up ordering 1,000. It’s fun spotting them out in the world.”

Events are another piece of the equation. While the Clement Street store hosts smaller readings, much of Green Apple’s programming now happens at its second location across Golden Gate Park, a space designed to hold larger crowds. For even bigger events, they’ll even go offsite. As a result, the store can host everything from intimate conversations to major literary events such as a feature with Ocean Vuong. Sometimes things get weirder. Pete told me about one appearance by Dave Eggers, who once offered relationship advice from a booth. On another occasion, he gave haircuts to a couple of brave volunteers.

“That big event pays for the little poetry reading where two people buy a book,” Pete said.

It’s all part of the same system: a store constantly adjusting, constantly redistributing energy from one part of the business to another.

“It’s the opposite of death by a thousand cuts,” Pete said. “It’s a thousand little improvements.”

It’s the perfect description. Not just of how Green Apple survives, but of how it feels to walk through it. 

Scott Lambridis is a novelist based in Bellingham, Washington. A former indie press founder, performance series organizer, olive farmer, and progressive rocker, he studied neurobiology at the University of Virginia, earned an MFA from San Francisco State University, and read a book from every country in the world. His debut novel, St. Ulphia’s Dead, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on July 7, 2026. Learn more at scottlambridis.com 

The Margery Crandon–Harry Houdini Feud, Belief, and Certainty

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by Maryka Biaggio

Margery Crandon

In the 1920s, America’s fascination with the supernatural collided head-on with a rising faith in scientific proof. Few clashes captured that tension as vividly as the feud between Margery Crandon, a celebrated Boston medium, and Harry Houdini, the world-famous magician turned debunker. Their battle was never just personal. It exposed something enduring about us: how badly we want certainty—especially when facing the unknown.

Crandon, known to believers as Margery, rose to prominence by producing dramatic séances. Bells rang, tables moved, and a mysterious substance called ectoplasm appeared in darkened rooms. For supporters, these phenomena were evidence of life after death—comforting proof that loved ones were not truly gone. Skeptics saw them as clever tricks performed under conditions designed to suspend disbelief.

Enter Houdini. Having mastered illusion himself, he felt a moral obligation to expose mediums who claimed paranormal powers. His crusade intensified after the death of his mother, a loss that sharpened his resolve rather than softening it. Houdini wanted answers, too—but answers that could withstand light, scrutiny, and repeatable testing.

Their conflict peaked when Margery’s abilities were examined by the Scientific American journal. The tests were contentious, the observers divided, and the conclusions inconclusive. Believers accused skeptics of bad faith; skeptics accused believers of wishful thinking. Each side claimed reason, evidence, and integrity. What no one could agree on was what proof should look like.

This stalemate reveals a deeper truth. When the stakes are emotional, as in grief, hope, and fear of death, certainty becomes a psychological need, not just an intellectual goal. For Margery’s followers, certainty came from experience: I felt it, I saw it, therefore it’s real. For Houdini, certainty came from method: If it can be controlled, replicated, and explained, then it’s real. These are not merely different standards; they are different ways of coping with uncertainty itself.

The feud also shows how certainty can harden into identity. To doubt Margery was, for some, to threaten the comfort of belief. To accept her claims was, for Houdini, to betray reason and enable exploitation. Once certainty becomes moralized, dialogue collapses. The argument stops being about truth and starts being about loyalty—who you stand with, not what you can show.

A century later, the Crandon–Houdini feud still feels familiar. We see the same dynamics in debates over science, politics, and technology. We crave firm ground in a shifting world, and we often choose the kind of certainty that best soothes our anxieties.

The lesson is not that skepticism or belief is superior, but that our hunger for certainty shapes how we interpret evidence. Recognizing that impulse—our own as much as others’—may be the first step toward a more honest engagement with the unknown.

My novel Margery and Me explores all this terrain, and I invite readers to consider their own views on belief and certainty as they dip into the story.

Maryka Biaggio is the author of Eden Waits, The Point of Vanishing, and The Model Spy. Her novel with Regal House, Margery and Me, releases in the summer of 2026. Maryka’s fiction has won several accolades, including the Willamette Writers Award, an Oregon Writers Colony Award, the Historical Novel Society Review Editors’ Choice, La Belle Lettre Award, the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) Notable Books Award, and a Regional Arts and Culture Council grant. She served on the Board of the Historical Novel Society North America Conference since 2015, and she lives in Portland, Oregon.

That’s My Story – Maryka Biaggio

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RHP staff had the pleasure of sitting down with Maryka Biaggio, author of Margery and Me, to talk about her path to publishing as well as her approach to the writing craft. We are delighted to share her answers with you!

When did you start writing?

I started writing in grade school. I found a short-story contest advertised on a matchbook and told my mother I was going to enter. Being busy with cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry for a husband and five children, she said something like, “That’s nice. Now get out of my way.” I submitted a story and anxiously waited to hear back. They never responded, and I hadn’t saved a copy of the story, so who knows what it was about—probably something about the hijinks my siblings and I got into when left on our own. [See photo, right, of my siblings and me making a pyramid.]

Do you ever use your cell phone to compose your work or track your ideas? Are there any author/writing apps you recommend?

I absolutely adore Scrivener, a writing tool that lets me put everything I need in one place—not just the chapters, but character sketches, photos of important places, website addresses for essential information, and even marketing materials. You could say it keeps me from straying too far from the novel in progress because it allows me to put all my resources in one place. And I also have Scrivener loaded on my phone, which is great on those occasions when I’m out and about and have some idea I want to record lest I forget it.

What is the most cringe-worthy thing someone has said when you tell them you’re a novelist?

“I’ve always wanted to write a novel. When I find the time, I’ll bang out a bestseller. How hard can it be?”

There’s a fair bit of interest, scientific and otherwise, in the links between creativity and insanity. How crazy must someone be to be a good author?

A good author has to be a little crazy. How else could they stand to spend endless hours putting words down on a page and hoping that the story they build will actually find its way out into the world? It’s a rough business, and I can encourage only those with thick skin and lots of perseverance to undertake the writing of a novel.

How do you develop your characters?

I find I have to write my way into my characters. I’ve chosen quite an array of real people as subjects—ranging from a nineteenth-century con woman to a model-turned-spy during World War II. I couldn’t be more dissimilar from those two characters, both of whom were gorgeous and wily, so I often spend weeks, sometimes months, trying to find the voice. But when I’m on my morning walk or baking a pie, and the character starts talking in a way that sounds like how I’ve imagined them, I know I’ve found their voice! It’s as if, after a great deal of mulling and research, my subconscious finally comes through for me. That’s the magical part of writing. [See photo of The Model Spy book cover, left.]

Maryka Biaggio is the author of Margery and Me, releasing from Regal House Publishing on April 21, 2026.

Interview with Jenny Shima, owner of The Literary

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by Brett Ashley Kaplan

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