Literati Bookstore
Image courtesy of the bookstore.
On the corner of E Washington in Ann Arbor, just a few blocks from the University of Michigan, lives a 4,000 square-foot green brick building. Messages are painted on the façade—things like, your eyes are like wonderful august skies, and, when was the last time someone told you that you are enough?—and larger-than-life typewriter keys spell out the shop’s name in the window. Step inside onto the black-and-white checkered floor and find tables of colorful, eye-catching book displays fastidiously straightened by employees, as well as tons of prints and journals and fine-point pens. Turn and hear the clacking of an old-school typewriter where guests of the store can leave anonymous messages (the inspiration for the wall art outside). Prior to COVID, one could look up a little and catch a whiff of fresh coffee brewing upstairs.
Image courtesy of the bookstore.
Despite sounding too quaint to be true, Literati Bookstore is, indeed, a very real place, one named Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year in 2019. It was opened eight years ago by Michigan natives Mike and Hilary Gustafson, who, when hearing about the closure of Borders in Ann Arbor, wanted to make sure the city wasn’t without a downtown general bookstore. The couple took inspiration from shops they had frequented when living in Brooklyn, and made the move home in 2013 to open Literati.
“Hilary and Mike, who in addition to wanting a wonderful selection of books and people who really care about reading, also want the kind of fundamental things you would hope you’d get in a bookstore,” says Inventory Manager Sam Krowchenko, who started as a bookseller at Literati in 2016 after getting accepted to the University of Michigan MFA program. “They really do care about the look of the place.”
Krowchenko adds, “Part of the thinking behind the store was not only for it to be a place to come and browse books, but to also be a community hub.” This goal is reflected in the number of local businesses Literati partnered with in designing the store, as well as in the merchandise they carry, and even in the sales floor community typewriter. “It was kind of a nice, old-fashioned way of giving voice to that mission, having an opportunity for anybody who was drifting through to jot down their thoughts and observations,” Krowchenko explains. “It ended up being this amazing, living document that grounded the store in this place and the people passing through”—so much so that a collected book of messages was published. (Some of Krowchenko’s favorites include somebody running into a stepsister they’d never met in the store, someone two days sober seeking out Literati for refuge, and a young boy trying to get in touch with Ann Arbor street performer “the Violin Monster.”)
Image courtesy of the bookstore.
But COVID restrictions have made it a challenge to foster community, putting many of the sensory elements that make Literati so special indefinitely on pause. “It was just a year of trying to keep our heads above water,” Krowchenko says. He also noted how much booksellers have missed the curatorial aspects of their jobs. “A lot of books that people were buying the past year involved them coming in and knowing exactly what they wanted,” he says, “but when they were browsing, they were inevitably stumbling into things they had no idea were out, or that they wanted. It was a really hard thing to replicate. It required a lot of our team to rethink and figure out other ways of keeping people engaged.”
One way the Literati team tried to do this was by scheduling tête-a-tête Zoom sessions with booksellers, where they could chat with customers about certain genres and make recommendations. They also started posting Saturday Shelfies on social media to try to help people feel more connected to the store, even at a distance.
Image courtesy of the bookstore.
Just prior to the pandemic, Krowchenko had also been working on a monthly podcast for Literati called Shelf Talking. “One of the instincts was just to have some kind of recording where people could hear things that maybe they weren’t able to come to, or didn’t know had passed through,” Krowchenko explains. “And the other thought was, if this can get shared around even a little bit, it would catch the eye of someone who had never thought of going to an event.” Krowchenko took recordings from in-person events and then curated them into themed episodes around genre and form, “trying to figure out ways the podcast could almost be an audio version of the experience you’d have if you had just wandered into the store.”
Shelf Talking has been on hiatus since the beginning of the pandemic when all of Literati’s events went virtual and now can be recorded videos through Facebook Live and Zoom, but Krowchenko still learned a lot from the experience. “There are certain events that I’ve heard on a very, very long loop, and that was really useful to get the perspective, not only of the different kinds of work people were doing, but also how they thought about it, how they discussed it, and the kind of weird threads that were incorporated.”
Image courtesy of the bookstore.
Working at Literati in graduate school also helped Krowchenko with his writing pursuits. “There’s a definite sense of what is being read and what is getting attention in that MFA bubble, and being at Literati, I saw that was not really what people were paying attention to,” he says. “The kind of scope of what I was perceiving people were reading and what they were actually reading was quite a large gap, and educating myself in that gap was pretty invaluable.” This has continued to be true post-graduation. “I’ve had some other jobs where it’s writing or more editorial, and part of what I like about working at Literati is maintaining a relationship to these things that is not writing,” he says. “I found that anytime I was trying to make a living off of writing and trying to read on the side, I had no leftover energy, so I love that I have so many tasks that are not really things that are drawing on my own writing practice, or my relationship to writing, but are kind of constantly keeping me involved in what’s going on.”
Even with the challenges of the past year, the folks at Literati still know exactly what is going on. They have continued to hold successful digital events, including President Obama on his book tour (“I remember in the weeks leading up to it, Hilary [Gustafson] was just so nervous about a thing that she couldn’t tell us anything about,” Krowchenko recalls. “And then we saw the video and understood.”). And Literati has also kept themselves afloat, so whatever the rest of the year brings, the team is determined to grow, make new memories, and—COVID guidelines permitting—have their community document it all on the special typewriter.
Image courtesy of the bookstore.
Recommendations from the Booksellers
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan
Blending science, memoir, travel writing, history, and medicine, Pollan’s latest participatory journalism project has him investigating the revolution taking place around psychedelic drug research in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. For instance, the book finds links between the administering of psychedelics that address addiction and depression in terminal cancer patients reckoning with their fear of death, alongside Pollan’s own experimentation with substances. “In lesser hands, all of these elements would kind of collide,” says Krowchenko, “but Pollan just weaves them really seamlessly so it’s constantly fascinating.”
Alright, Alright, Alright: The Oral History of Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused by Melissa Maerz
Linklater’s 1993 film began with nothing more than the thought that people might like to watch a story about teenagers hanging out in the ‘70s. Nearly thirty years later, the execution of that idea on-screen has helped launch careers, including that of Matthew McConaughey with his iconic phrase from which this book gets its name. “Maerz finds all the cast, talks to Richard Linklater, as well as tons of the people who worked at the studio at the time,” Krowchenko explains of this fascinating oral history. “It’s this great glimpse at an early period of ‘90s American independent movie-making, and is also filled with all the backstage gossip and hijinks that you could possibly want.”
A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
This new novel from the award-winning author of The Welsh Girl and The Fortunes explores parenthood, marriage, and the vulnerable practice of love through the lens of a couple who decides to terminate their first pregnancy after receiving devastating test results, then chooses to carry the second to term. “Peter never really loses sight,” Krowchenko adds, noting that while the book is heavy (especially given its brevity), it is also really, really funny. “I found it moving and humane, and it is also aggressively full of puns, which I appreciated. Every once in a while you need a good pun to get you out of the doldrums.”
