Straub becomes latest writer to own a bookshop
NEW YORK — Novelist Emma Straub has become the latest author to open a bookshop.
Books Are Magic opened last month in Brooklyn, New York, near where Straub lives with her husband, Michael Fusco, and their two young children.
Straub, author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers, decided to open the store after the closing of a beloved local bookshop called BookCourt that had been in business for 35 years. Straub worked at BookCourt from 2009 to 2013, and remembers it as a “glorious, wonderful place. We couldn’t fathom the idea of not having a bookstore in our neighbourhood.”
Books Are Magic’s opening featured dogs waiting outside while their owners shopped, a cash register decorated with good-luck bouquets and lines of customers stretching to the back of the store, where toddlers played in a children’s area.
Straub said Fusco is the “secret weapon” in running the business. “My husband is extremely organized and good with details. He is going to be running the bookstore on a day-to-day basis.”
Here are some other bookstores owned by writers:
Parnassus, Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto, State of Wonder and Commonwealth, co-owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee. Karen Hayes, handles the general running, while Patchett describes her role as “pretty much the dispenser of fairy dust. I bring a lot of the magic, but I’m a disaster on the cash register.”
An Unlikely Story, Jeff Kinney
Diary of a Wimpy Kid author Jeff Kinney and his wife run their store in Plainville, Massachusetts. It’s also a café. The store opened in 2015 on the site of a general store dating to the 1800s.
Books & Books, Judy Blume
Famous writers who have lived in Key West, Florida, include Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway. Some days you can spot another writer there at the bookstore she co-founded: Judy Blume, author of young-adult classics such as Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Blume “spends a majority of her year in Key West and works in the bookstore regularly,” according to manager Mia Clement.
Booked Up, Larry McMurtry
Booked Up , a used bookstore, is in Archer City, Texas, hometown of writer Larry McMurtry, best known for Lonesome Dove. The business downsized from four buildings to two a few years ago but still “carries between 150,000 and 200,000 fine and scholarly books,” according to its website.