I lived in Columbus for six years after college. It’s where I met my wife, where I played in a band, and where I first got serious about writing—serious enough to start a small press of my own. So when I spoke with Linda Kass of Gramercy Books, I assumed I knew what kind of bookstore landscape she was describing.
I didn’t.
Gramercy opened in 2016, long after I’d left town, in Bexley, an inner-ring suburb just east of downtown Columbus. Kass, a writer herself, had spent nine years running a community reading program that brought national authors to the area. When a new building went up on Main Street, directly across from the Bexley Public Library, she saw the opportunity clearly: a bookstore shaped by her own sense of what a literary space could be. A woman-owned store in a community that hadn’t had a bookstore since 1978.
Listening to Kass, I realized Gramercy is part of something larger: not the decline of bookstore culture—the story we’ve all been told for years—but a local revival.
As Kass put it, “We have this corner where we celebrate reading.”
When Gramercy opened, Columbus already had one famous holdout, The Book Loft in German Village, with its thirty-odd rooms and cultish following. But now, Kass said, there are around fifteen bookstores in the greater Central Ohio area, each serving a different community. She sees that not as competition, but as evidence that something real is happening. “That should be celebrated,” she said. “That means people are reading.”
Gramercy’s own contribution to that revival is deliberate. The store feels elegant but welcoming: dark wood shelves, strong signage, a bright white children’s room that makes up nearly a third of both the store’s footprint and sales. Next door, a bakery and coffee shop shares the space through barn doors, encouraging customers to drift between books and conversation. The pairing was intentional. Kass had seen similar models work elsewhere—bookstores creating small ecosystems of complementary businesses—and wanted to build that kind of cross-traffic into Gramercy.
What gives the place its energy, though, is its events program. Gramercy hosts about one event a week, sometimes in-store, sometimes off-site when crowds grow beyond the shop’s sixty-seat capacity. Kass curates a mix that ranges widely: haiku poets, romance discussions, national novelists, music-and-book pairings, even large events at an indie film theater or live music venue nearby. For her, the point is connection. Author events, she said, create a “far deeper relationship” between books, writers, and readers.
That sense of relationship shows up everywhere. The staff, Kass said, are “the heart of the store.” They’re knowledgeable, welcoming, and attentive enough to call customers when a book comes in they know they’ll love. In a low-margin business, that kind of care doesn’t come easily. Gramercy now offers health and retirement benefits, something Kass took pride in building toward over time.
Asked what explains the store’s success, she gave a simple answer: “We just try to do everything well.”
That may also describe what’s happening across Columbus right now. Not flashy, not nostalgic, and not accidental. Just a growing network of stores, each rooted in its own corner, suggesting that the old narrative of literary decline was never the only one.
When I returned to Columbus this summer after nearly twenty years away, I could sense some of that shift—not just in bookstores, but in the city itself, in its pockets of creative space and unexpected gems. Something more confident, more self-defined. Gramercy feels like part of that story now.
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
