To someone like myself, the air inside an independent bookstore can seem slightly pressurized. Perhaps it is the knotted anxiety of looking face-to-face at the bookseller upon entry, uncertain of what to say. You may wipe your palms before lifting a book from a display table, raising it to your thoughtful visage. “Why yes,” the pose says, “IUnlike the big chain bookstores – Chapters and Indigo in Canada, Barnes & Noble in the U.S. – local indie bookshops are unavoidably human spaces.
Jason Purcell, co-owner of Edmonton's Glass bookshop, sits in the store. The store's catalogue speaks to the concerns of Purcell, their colleagues, and the community.Raffaelli’s research was instrumental in inspiring Purcell and Matthew Stepanic to open Glass Bookshop in late 2019, just months before the pandemic. “We need to be a united front against places like Amazon or Indigo, because independent bookstores are so important to individual communities,” says Purcell.
Gay Writes brings together indie bookstores from across the country, like Type and Queen Books in Toronto, Saint-Henri Books in Montreal and Shelf Life in Calgary. “There are so many folks who James embraced to create this network around reading a book a month, getting online and talking about it. It also opens up so many things around accessibility,” says Purcell.
“If all the Indigos were suddenly to disappear tomorrow, we’d be okay. But if we lost the independent bookstores, our sales would plummet.” Toronto's Type is a leader in the indie bookstore boom, giving booksellers the freedom to define a store by their own interests, expertise, and relationships to the community.This thoughtful, handmade approach extends to events as well. Claire Foster, a literary translator and Type’s event co-ordinator since 2020, speaks with excitement of the in-person events they’ve been able to restart this past summer.