Bestselling Author Emma Straub Prepares To Open New York Bookstore

Bestselling author of The Vacationers and Modern Lovers Emma Straub has announced that construction is under-way for her new bookstore in Butler, New York following the closure of the community’s much loved bookstore BookCourt.

BookCourt, pictured below, closed late last year as a result of it’s owners reaching retirement, leaving a space in Butler for a new bookstore. As Straub describes it, “a neighborhood without an independent bookstore is a body without a heart. And so we’re building a new heart.”

Source: Gothamist

Source: Gothamist

Construction is now in progress following Straub’s announcement in December that, together with her husband, she will be developing the new store at 225 Smith Street, on the corner of Butler in New York. This new update on her progress comes from her recent Instagram post of the store, which hopes to open by May.

Straub explains that she hopes to bring a new store to the area where people can buy and enjoy books at the heart of their community:

“I think BookCourt did a really beautiful job for 35 years, and I hope to be half as good at it as they were…We are truly just doing this to fill this hole in this neighborhood where we live, that has been served so beautifully by BookCourt for so long. We’re just trying to be a little salve for the wound.”

After much deliberation, Straub decided on the name Books Are Magic for the store, following a brief consideration of the idea of selling solely children’s books. She suggests that they made the decision to sell all kinds of books instead, illustrating the way that “books are magic, that’s it, that’s the whole point. And we decided that books are magic for everyone, not just children.”

Source: Amazon

Source: Amazon

Straub’s sixth and most recent novel, Modern Lovers, was published in May of 2016 and was an instant New York Times bestseller. The author now hopes that her success in writing books can now translate into selling them for the whole community.

YouTube Channel: Politics and Prose

 

Featured image via Bookstr

h/t Gothamist