Around Indies

Westport Booksellers Named Women of the Year

Nancy Crosby, the 81-year-old founder of Partners Village Store in Westport, Massachusetts, and long-time book buyer and co-owner Jan Hall have been named The Standard-Times 2012 Westport Women of the Year for their efforts in creating a true sense of community. Nominations for the award came from the community and members of the newspaper staff. Recipients were selected by a newsroom committee.

“Jan and Nancy have created a meeting place that reflects the unique, eclectic spirit of our town, a place where people can come together for coffee, a fantastic lunch, or a celebration of books and art,” Westport author Dawn Tripp told the paper. “It’s a gift shop, a toy store, a book lover’s rendezvous…. A strong independent bookstore is lifeblood to a community, and Partners is a gift to Westport.”

Word Up Reaches Funding Goal for Uptown Shop

On New Year’s Day, New York’s Word Up Community Bookshop reached its funding goal of $60,000 towards its reopening in new location, according to DNAinfo.com.

Word Up’s IndieGoGo fundraising campaign was launched in November and was eventually extended an extra nine days, till January 1.

The bookstore, which moved out of its West 176th Street location in August after it lost its lease, is looking for an affordable space uptown, anywhere between 165th and 190th streets, in New York City.

Prairie Lights to Launch Publishing Program

Iowa City’s Prairie Lights will soon launch a small publishing operation that will print a few books each year, according to the Press-Citizen. Store co-owner Jan Weissmiller told the paper that the idea for the press grew from a conversation she had with the director of the University of Iowa Press. “We were just talking about challenges to bookstores and we both sort of thought of it simultaneously,” Weissmiller said. “What do bookstores do in this era of e-books and online buying?”

Prairie Lights will act as the book publisher, while UI Press, which already has the processes in place to produce and distribute books on a large scale, will produce, design, and distribute books.

Weissmiller said that the new publishing venture will likely publish fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction, rather than history or journalism.

In the works are Sweet Will, a collection of poems by UI alum Philip Levine, and Coming Close, a collection of work by Levine’s colleagues and students.

River Lights Becomes Wedding Venue for Owner’s Daughter

River Lights Bookstore in Dubuque, Iowa, always a magical place, became even more so for the wedding of Emma, the daughter of owner Sue Davis.

In a ceremony and reception that were both book related, the couple encouraged guests to look around and “feel the beauty of words and wisdom surround us” in “a bookstore that Emma’s father built, and Emma’s mother runs, a bookstore where both Emma and her brother were raised and nurtured. This space represents a true labor of love.”

The reception’s menu cards were Penguin postcards featuring vintage book covers, and on display were many titles whose featured characters bore the name Emma and/or groom Sam.