Sarah!

Photo of Sarah

A LONGSTANDING BOOKSELLER here who loves researching new titles.  Looking to dig deep?  She’s on the case!

1.     What was the last great book you read?
I refuse to pit tales from disparate forms against one another, so with that loophole, Jacqui Germain's debut poetry collection Bittering the Wound, Winner of the 2021 CAAPP Book Prize. (As an aside, as someone who was around and participated in the Ferguson Uprising, I can say this with absolute authority: B.T.W. is in the key of Donny Hathaway’s A Song for You from Live at the Troubadour.) This wrecked me! I'm putting this up there with Sing, Unburied, Sing; A Small Place; and The Dragon Can't Dance. The specificity of a time, place, and community continuously rocked by centuries of circumstances, flexing a kind of slanted refusal to play it as it lays?? Jacqui has the range.  P.S. The epigraph is a quote from one of my favorite co-workers, former Subterranean bookseller Brandon Wilson!

Blood of the Virgin by Sammy Harkham, a graphic novel that took about a decade, I think, to finish is gorgeous. It's a lot of things, but on the short end, it reminds me of Marie Howe's poem What The Living Do, a young Jewish Iraqi father trying to make it in the movie scene during the golden era of Grindhouse. 

Dr. No by Percival Everett

2. Are there any classic books you’ve read only recently for the first time?
The Will to Change by bell hooks

3. Which writers – novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets - working today do you admire most?
Percival Everett, James Hanaham, Joss Barton, Akwaeki Emezi, Will Alexander, Costica Bradatan, Jamacia Kincaid, Yoko Tawada

4. What do you read when you are supposed to be working and shelving books?
Edelweiss, making lists, and my coworkers’ shelf talkers.

5. How do you organize your books?
Yes and No.

6. What’s the best book you ever received as a gift?
The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard from my college roommate. A cool individual who introduced me to the experimental short-film world. 

7. What kind of reader were you as a child?
Terrible! I am dyslexic and cunning, so I pretended I knew how to read until I was 9. The gag was up when I wanted to read the Redwall series, but obviously couldn't. Luckily, my parents were determined, and I went from about a kindergarten to an 8th-grade reading level the year I got, got. 

8. Which writers, alive or dead, would you invite to a literary dinner party?
Percival Everett, Harriet Jacobs, Earl Lovelace, Ben Marcus, Rachel Ingalls, Elaine Castillo. Barbeque at Forest Park 

9. What do you plan to read next?
Apple in the Dark by Clarice Lispector and Come Together by Emily Nagoski