Happy Pride and ever onward!

First up: We are so proud and happy to host a chill space tonight for attendees at Trans March! The live stream of Clark Park events is being set up right now. And we're delighted to once again be vendors at Vancouver Dyke March, Saturday 3 August, 12-5pm at Grandview Park! These two events are the most special parts of Pride Week in Vancouver, for us--inclusive, friendly, accessible, on a neighbourhood scale that quieter souls can enjoy. Tomorrow, we will be joined at the booth by two author guests, Tanya Boteju and Kristy Gardner, to share the good news about their upcoming new releases. We hope to see you!

Our anniversary passed last month with just a little fanfare. We have been very budget-conscious as we work toward long-term financial sustainability for your bookstore. Thank you for making our anniversary month one of the best we've had yet--up 15% from June! If we can climb another 15 percent, we can begin to breathe easy. For us that means less daily worry. For you it means more wonderful new titles by queer and trans authors, more art and gifts by local queer and trans artists.

So that thing you've been doing, keep doing it! Keep bringing your friends and telling folks about us. Every new friend helps us on our way to establishing ourselves as part of the future of this community.

Speaking of community, let me tell you about the cool things on our calendar for you to enjoy!

On 22 August, we'll be the booksellers at Kostuik Gallery's launch party for Long Live Queer Nightlife, a new book by UBC professor Amin Ghaziani that explores the history and importance of nightlife in queer culture, and looks at how it's taking new forms as queer, trans, and racialized folks replace traditional nightlife with radically inclusive parties.

On 4 September, Mx. Nillin Lore presents How Do I Sexy? a guide to sexuality and relationships for trans and nonbinary queers struggling to find their sexual selves in a landscape rife with misogynistic, transphobic and homophobic ideals and expectations. In this virtual event, Nillin will discuss the book with Vancouver therapist J. Matsui de Roo, followed by a moderated Q & A. Click here to order your book and and make your FREE reservation for the online event.

On 20 September, join local authors Wren Handman, Lucas J.W. Johnson, and Ziggy Schütz for readings, a panel, and a Q & A and book launch as part of Culture Days, Canada's national arts festival.

And I can't tell you how pleased we are to be invited as the bookseller for WordVancouver, the annual FREE literary festival coming up 21-28 September. Dozens of authors--readings--vendors--it's going to be great! Click here for information on WordVancouver memberships (which come with a little discount when you buy featured books from us) and to stay informed about festival events.

Please do ask us about regular gatherings including the 4th Sunday Queer Fibre Arts group, and 4th Monday Polyamory Discussion. Let us know if you'd like to learn more about hosting meetings and events in our space.

And finally, after many delays and frustrations, on Sunday 6 October we will launch Al-Khubz al Hayat/O Bread of Life, a zine to raise funds for relief in Palestine, inspired by my far-flung Lebanese family's traditional cooking. My late dad's hummus is the best hummus--garlicky, lemony, so satisfying--you'll get to try it, and pick up a sample of a classic Levantine spice blend along with your copy of the zine. The occupation of Palestine has loomed over the lives of everyone connected to the Middle East for so long, and I am so glad to be able to do this small thing.

The Joy of Pride and the State of the Shop

East Side Pride has been one of my favourite days of the year since I arrived in Vancouver in 2016. Performance, consciousness-raising, community mourning and solidarity and joy, at a human scale in a people-friendly location. Last Saturday was our second time vending at East Side Pride and the kindly welcome from everyone was just the same, only more so! Thank you, neighbours and friends, for every encouraging word. Thank you for talking us up to your folk--so many people said, "Hey, I've heard of you! I've been meaning to come in and see your shop!' Thank you for buying books, especially from our author and artist guests. Thank you for bringing your whole selves to the gathering and letting us celebrate with you. Thank you for supporting us. We can't wait to meet up with you again in Grandview Park for Dyke March, on 3 August!

Speaking of support, we are now going to call on you to support us in a specific way. Many of you regularly ask how you can help us (really, you are just the best humans and I am routinely misty-eyed at all the kindness you bring in this door with you), so this is a response to that as well as to the State of the Shop. Which is--

--holding on. Just. June is on target to be down about 25% from May, after two months of nearly reaching our goals for sustainable operation. [Note: Edited to update figure from prevoius estimate of 20%.]

So of course Your Data-Driven Bookseller sits down and does the math and looks at all the graphs, figuring out what they tell us about What's Working and how we can do More Of That, Thank You. And what they tell us pretty consistently is we need more of you lovely folks. Here's how it's looking:

1. About 8 out of every 10 visitors to the shop makes a purchase. Especially for a place of our modest scale, that's astounding. The average "conversion rate" across all retail categories is about 25%, so for 80% of people who walk in the door to choose to spend their book money here is massive. This tells us we're getting the right books, and connecting them with the right people.

2. Our average sale is a respectable $33--that's 1 new book or 2-4 used books, or a stack of stickers, for every person who spends money here.

3. We have been seeing fewer people. We know why, in at least some cases:

- As genocides rage and the economy gets harsher, even our biggest fans are reducing their spending. This means you. We see you making the same decisions we do every time we go to the grocery store or pay our utility bills. We get up every day feeling like we have rocks in our chests, weighing on our hearts as bombs keep falling on our siblings in Palestine. We know you're sending some of your budget to UNRWA and Operation Olive Branch and other orgs struggling to help. We know that's what you're doing with your money. We can't begrudge it or dream of asking you to do any differently. That's just what needs to happen right now.

- The developer building the new apartment block two doors over from us still frequently closes the sidewalk without warning. A couple of weeks ago, our neighbour from Games on the Drive popped their head in and asked how the day's closure had affected us, and that was the first I heard of being closed that day. It explained why I had seen only three people all afternoon!

- We still haven't saved up enough to get the big sign we planned for the front of the building. Your Eager Bookseller went over budget getting new books when we first opened, and that was the thing sacrificed. It's still on the list, just not first on the list. So some folks are still having a hard time spotting us, or think we're not open.

What we need to do to get this place self-sustaining is connect with more people like you. Folks who cherish queer space and make a point of seeking it out, even when the construction and traffic are really annoying. Folks who treasure books and especially queer books, and the experience of being in a bookstore. Folks who love meeting and supporting queer authors and artists. Folks who, when they want a book, choose places like this to get it from. And we can't think of a better way to celebrate both Pride season and the first year of being your bookseller, than to make a bunch of new friends. So send us your beloveds, your darling buds, your favourite people, and we'll give all of you some queer booky love!

This Pride season, from today until the end of Vancouver Pride on 4 August, we're offering a special for every person who creates a new account on our website, and every person who refers a new supporter. New customers will receive a promo code good for 25% off their first online order (the whole order) placed any time through 4 August. And when they place their order and name the friend who referred them to us, we'll give that excellent friend the same promo code! New accounts will receive instructions on sharing their referral along with their promo code.

Thank you, beauties, for all your help. I'll be back with you soon to update you on plans for our first anniversary and a long-delayed zine launch! Keep well--

Nena

Whatever are you doing?

Hello! I speak to you from the land of the eternally behind, where Sisyphus is our patron saint. Like any baby its age, this almost 9-month-old bookstore needs constant care!Blog posts are often last on the list.

First off, I'm writing now to update you on three projects that we cherish here at the bookstore, and that you have kindly supported.

the little gallery
This program continues, but we are taking a one-month break while Taz, who has been so generous with their time and energy, focuses on some life essentials and Nena pays close attention to the plethora of other events scheduled for April. We do have our May artist lined up for you, and we earnestly invite you to come appreciate Dacey Eliot's work that is currently hanging on the gallery wall.




First Sunday Community Book Fair
Our first book fair, featuring Disability Alliance of BC, was a wonderful success in many ways--thank you for your support! We raised $140 to support programs serving our disabled neighbours. We also learned a thing or two, so we are taking a breath and thinking through how to best make this program as useful as possible to the orgs and people it's supposed to benefit. We will be checking in with orgs that have reached out hoping to participate, and scheduling future events with our new experiences in mind.

Bread of Life Zine
The last time I made a zine, I was running an established bookstore and I was quite a few years younger. I somehow imagined that producing a zine while running a new shop, living in my middle-aged body, and being a functional member of my family would go smoothly. Well, no. A project I thought would take a month at most has taken three. I'm still working at it. However, I can report that I'm close to done--the text pages are ready to print. Updates with release info coming soon.

Next, I want to exhort, encourage, urge you to check out our upcoming events! We've got amazing author guests and events lined up, most of them centring and celebrating queer authors, as is our heart, our purpose, our reason for being. We are also thankful to have been invited to provide books for some offsite book launches by local writers. Click here to jump over to our events list and get the details, or pop in to look at the diverse and wonderful books these authors have created. As a new shop, we did not anticipate being able to bring you such a rich list of great author guests and activities at this stage. This is exciting for us and we hope you'll come check out the offerings.

On that note, we are extra-specially excited about our very first Canadian Independent Bookstore Day! Saturday, 27 April is the annual day when readers, writers, illustrators, publishers, and others come together to celebrate indie bookstores across Canada. By joining the celebration, you are advocating for independent businesses, supporting a flourishing bookselling community, and investing in Canadian culture. How can you participate? Come to the bookstore! There will be swag, there will be a guest artist--and every book you buy that day comes with a chance to win a $1000 gift card to your favourite indie (which, you know, we hope we are). Click here for more!

And now I'm going to answer two of the store's most frequently asked questions: How are things going? How can we support you?

Well, things are going okay. Winter has been a bit rough, bracketed by six (yep, six) days of sidewalk closures in December when we were hoping to really build up momentum, and an unexpected entire long weekend of sidewalk closures at the end of March. We did plan for winter to be challenging, and for construction to be challenging, but that was kind of a lot, especially the latest bit. It has hit us right in the budget. The shelves are thin, especially in our very popular Queer section, and we are working hard to build up our selection and keep it fresh for you. That said, we are excited and proud to note that 8 out of 10 people who walk in the door find something here they like, and take it home. And we are happy to see the queer and trans creators we champion so joyfully embraced by so many of you.

What it comes down to is that we would love to see more of you, more often, and hook you up with books. So--if you don't see it, ask for it! Especially when our budget demands we be very choosy, your special orders are key to helping us identify the right books, and keep them coming. And of course, they help us fund more books! Also, do please join us for our author events and other activities. Your presence is what makes them great occasions. Finally, if you like us, tell the world! Your social media shares and stories help us find new friends and make the new connections a young bookstore needs to grow strong. Every time a post of ours gets more attention than usual, that leads to measurable amounts of new activity and new energy in the bookstore. Your data-driven bookseller can see it! It really does matter enormously and we are so thankful for all your boosting on the socials.

On the many Arabic words for love

THIS BOOK IS 30% OFF FOR A REASON. PLEASE GIVE IT TO A TEACHER, A PARENT, A BELOVED CHILD. DISCOUNT APPLIED IN PROCESSING: promo code UHIBBOUKUM 

Weeks ago, I placed orders for beautiful children's books to fill our shop and your homes with colour and build warm connections between you and the kids in your lives. I was so excited to choose Eleven Words for Love, a celebration of the way the Arabic language distinguishes between many forms of love, written by Palestinian-Egyptian author Randa Abdel-Fattah.

It arrived today, though it's not officially published for another week. Maxine Beneba Clarke's utterly gorgeous illustrations glow with the saturated colours of desert skies and flowers and lemon trees, and a refugee family's treasures as they carry their memories of all these loves to their next stopping place. I unpacked it and excitedly started to flip through.

I had not cried about Palestine until today.

I couldn't stop. I made a mess of this keyboard and the UPS guy asked if I was okay. All the distance, all the helplessness, all the rage/grief has come crashing in with this one lovely book and I just could not any more.

I cherish the uniqueness and dignity and resilience of Jewish culture in its resurgence from the Shoah and the many brutalities that drove its diaspora. I also, deeply and firmly, cherish the uniqueness and dignity and resilience of Palestinian culture in the face of the Nakba that has shadowed the Arab collective awareness since before I was born. The willingness of any individual or group to inflict that on another will only ever baffle and enrage me. 

I can't fix the last 75 years or change the path of a nation-state, but I can share with you this little celebration of the resilience and beauty of the Palestinian people. I think it needs to be seen. I invite you to appreciate a small part of why Palestinian culture is precious and worthy of care, and more broadly why a singular experience of the world is worth preserving. So. Eleven Words goes on sale so that as many people as possible can welcome this Palestinian view of love into their lives. Please enter UHIBBOUKUM at checkout. It's Arabic for 'I love you all.'

For my Lebanese dad and every great-uncle and cousin whose lives have been blown apart in land wars in the Levant; for Ziad, dad's Palestinian best man, the wild-hearted charter pilot, who went home and disappeared there; for every Palestinian I have ever known who can't go home, or who has less and less home to go to, and tries to build what is precious about home wherever they land; for every queer Arab who walks fine lines trying to cherish a culture that often doesn't give space to queerness but has so many words for love, this small thing, simple when other things are complicated. Uhibboukum, habeybi.

--Nena Raoudahtel-Balah 

 A bookseller's 9/11

On a day when many folk share memories, I offer you this one that contributed to my formation as a bookseller and literary host:

My job as events coordinator at a Portland bookstore involved making sure that the show went on, whenever possible, but on that Tuesday my second thought upon hearing the news was that impossible must surely have just happened. Feeling sure our scheduled author guest would want to cancel, I made haste to call her media escort and offer all understanding for any decision the author made.

Jemiah Jefferson reads from Mixtape for the Apocalypse

The response came back quickly: No, please, she was a New Yorker stranded on the west coast, with no way to reach her family and no clear idea of when she would be able to fly home. She needed to do her work, and be with others. She hoped to connect with readers who also needed simply to gather. All right. I wasn't sure if anyone would come but the hospitality of the bookstore would be at her service. I set up the chairs and hoped she'd get a turnout, but I doubted. I doubted worse than Thomas. Worse, I cared that it looked like we were about to have a flop.

I underestimated everyone.

The audience did come. The author did read, beautifully, but briefly. Then she said that she was glad to keep reading but she didn't feel it was the most meaningful thing she could do at the moment. She asked the audience if they wanted her to open the floor to just talk, and listen to each other. And so they did, and she did.

I learned a great deal that evening, not about the author's writing, but about holding space. It's an overused and often misused term, but when I hear it I remember that woman, and the neighbours who came to the reading, looking for people to be with in a place that would let them. These were not folks who would seek out a church or other traditional place of solace, and they didn't want to buy rounds of drinks. They came to meet this New York writer stuck across the country from her beloveds, and hold space for her, and each other. She showed up and did the same for them, and together they taught me everything I hadn't known before about how and why to do that as a bookseller. 

Willy Vlautin signs The Free

It took me a long time to understand what I learned. After over 20 years, I can no longer remember the author's name, nor the title of her book. I lost those bits of information sometime in the years I took off to raise babies and edit books, when I thought I was out of retail for good. I can't find her by searching on the details I do recall. (I haven't given up yet--just tried again.) This makes me very sad, because she was amazing and deserves to know that she is remembered for her graceful, thoughtful handling of such an awful day, the gift of her time and presence to a community that needed a focus for coming together, and an invitation. I wish she could know that I learned from her not to rate looking professional above being human, and how precious the third place of a bookstore could be. I learned to trust communities of readers and believe in the power of holding space. I learned that a slow night was not as important as a night together. I learned to love this specific part of a bookseller's work, possibly more than any other. (Do I sometimes feel anxious about whether it's going to go well, or if I'm doing it right? Oh yes. It's still worth doing and I can't imagine stopping, short of another public health disaster.)

Since then I've hosted literal hundreds of author events and that author has been on my mind at every one. I've been getting ready to welcome artists and authors into this new third place so she's been with me again. (Unapologetic plug: there's an Events tab on the home page of our website if you want to keep track of the doings!) And here it is, the 22nd anniversary of the day I met her, so I thought I'd share. If you happen to come to an event here, in a way, you'll meet her too. 

--Nena

on one-month anniversaries

Monthiversaries are for new relationships and new babies. This bookstore is both. Happy monthiversary from this baby bookstore to all of you, with whom we are now in a new relationship!

On the way into work today, I pondered the last month. Every thought was accompanied by waves of gratitude. If you took me in for a brain scan right now I expect my frontal lobes would be glowing kaleidoscopically. And it's been like this for a while. 

I began this project feeling grateful to the longtime friends who were so determined to help me succeed and support my family that they gave me masses of money. (In a society where you can't thrive without it, money is love made tangible.) Now I'm pretty much floored with gratitude every day, when new people walk in the front door. 

Y'all are so dang kind. You've said things to me like 'I'm so glad you're here,' and 'Oh, this is so welcoming,' and 'Thank you for creating this here.' You bring your kids, your siblings, your friends, your partners, your secondhand books. You share us on your socials. You pick out books, yes, that too. You lift us up, you wrap us in community.

Especially all our queer folk. It's such a privilege to be creating this space. The gratitude many of you have expressed when you visited tells us that this place needs to exist, and grow. (We shouldn't have to be grateful just for not being actively excluded, loves!) And being with you over Pride weekend, at Dyke March and during Martha Shelley's reading on Saturday evening, was just the best thing. The best thing.

So thank you, all and some, for a memorably lovely first month. Stick with us and we'll make more.

--Nena

Currently reading: The Stars in Their Eyes by Kristy Gardner