A Note from Audrey Jennifer Smith
The Wednesday morning after the 2024 election, as I clocked in for my shift at the independent bookstore where I work in Greensboro, North Carolina, I felt grateful to know that I had a job to do. There was coffee to be made, and new paperbacks to shelve, and antifascist literature to display. And most importantly, in the tradition of the independent bookstore as a hub of political resistance, there was a community to serve, who would be counting on our store to be a safe place just to be—and to feel all the grief, terror, and rage that had come to a head with the previous night’s results.
Recently, I felt another swell of gratitude for the work I get to do as a bookseller, when I had the privilege of speaking with fellow writer-booksellers Michael Leali, Ashley Lumpkin, and Lillian Li. Our discussion, which took place in early January 2025, explores this potential for bookselling to be a form of resistance, as well as a way of connecting readers with stories that will inspire, comfort, represent, and galvanize. We also explored the sometimes tricky but often exciting intersections of our roles as people who alternately create, consume, and market works of literature, as well as the various challenges and joys we encounter as writer-booksellers in this specific political moment.
Audrey Jennifer Smith
I’d like to have everyone start by introducing themselves to each other. And as a way of connecting your writerly and bookseller-ly identities, I’d love it if you could describe the shelf—or shelves—where someone can find your work at the bookstore where you worked most recently.