"I worked at an independent bookstore, Literati, in downtown Ann Arbor for four years, and it was a big reason I decided to live in Ann Arbor long-term. It put me in touch with so many readers in my town and pushed me to read widely so that I could give them the best recommendations in any genre.

"At Literati, we have a staff picks wall, and my best memory is actually when my first book (Number One Chinese Restaurant) came out. The entire staff picks wall was dedicated to my book! It was the most meaningful gift to have had so many of my co-workers read my book and be excited to share it with our readers."

Despite what was "arguably the most challenging year for independent booksellers," 2025 was also "a banner year" for indies, American Booksellers Association CEO Allison Hill said during the organization's annual meeting yesterday.

During the year, 605 new independent bookstores opened, and membership grew 19%, to 3,417 bookstore companies with 3,783 locations. It was the fifth consecutive year that at least 200 new bookstores opened; since Hill became CEO in early 2020, ABA membership has grown 151%. This is a sign, Hill said, of "a healthy ecosystem," and has been marked by diversity. Of the 605 new stores in 2025, 399 were bricks-and-mortar, 77 mobile, 106 popups, and 23 online. Some 13% were opened by people of color.

The majority of ABA members stores had sales increases in 2025, another "obvious sign of health." In addition, almost all publishers that the ABA communicates with regularly said that the indie channel grew for them during the year.

The challenges indies faced in 2025 were myriad, Hill continued, and were both "expected and unexpected." These included rising costs, tariffs, ICE and the National Guard presences in some bookstores' communities, discriminatory laws, the impact of climate change, book bans and challenges, and free speech harassment in many forms, as well as the perennial problems of low margins and "Amazon's monopoly chokehold" on the book world.

About ICE and National Guard invasions of communities, Hill emphasized that beyond the significant emotional, psychological, and moral issues that the often violent actions raise, there are severe negative financial and business effects.

Allison Hill at yesterday's ABA Annual Meeting

But booksellers are resilient, Hill said, and "you all continue to do incredibly important work in your communities and the world." She praised booksellers for their efforts to counter school budget cuts as well as book challenges and bans that aim to deter access to books and to silence trans, LGBTQ, and BIPOC voices and stories. In addition, she praised bookstores for "providing an antidote to the loneliness epidemic."

She emphasized that the ABA team of 41 people works hard to serve the needs of the ever-growing membership ("Our bandwidth was very, very stretched in 2025, but our commitment never wavered"), and thanked the board and staff for their dedication. She encouraged booksellers to use ABA resources and turn to it for help when needed. For example, she noted that the ABA worked "one on one" with several stores having landlord problems, copyright disputes about their names, frivolous lawsuits, and needing help reorganizing debt.

Hill emphasized that a key part of what the association does involves free speech and advocacy, which "has become so much more critical in the last year." She encouraged booksellers to help by writing their representatives and in other ways. She also extolled the ABA's partnership with the League of Women Voters, a way to expand voting.

Hill also provided some historical perspective, observing that in "the very long history of independent bookstores," there have been many periods of disruption and existential threats, but that "the passion and the purpose and innovation and resilience of indie bookstores not only ensures their long-term survival but represents the future that this industry needs and the future that our country needs."

ABA co-vice-president Jake Cumsky-Whitlock of Solid State Books, Washington, D.C., gave the financial report, stating the association's financial state is "sound," with a strong cash position, an investment portfolio of $27 million, and results last year that were ahead of budget. The ABA also met two important benchmarks for associations: having cash reserves equivalent to almost three years (as opposed to one to two years' worth) and spending more than 70% of the budget for programming. (In 2025, 79% of total expenses went to programming.)

Cumsky-Whitlock added that the outlook for 2026 is positive, with expected revenue of more than $9 million and expenses of about $9.7 million. The difference will be made up for with funds from investment earnings. In 2025, the association also invested $700,000 in IndieCommerce 2.0 and a Bookweb.org update.

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Hill opened the Community Forum by addressing some pre-submitted questions related to this year's Winter Institute, particularly the decisions to exclude the press from certain sessions and to not hold an in-person Community Forum.

Regarding the sessions, Hill said they were closed for "privacy and protection reasons." One of those was about ICE, and the concern was that booksellers might not speak freely if they were worried about facing repercussions for being named or quoted in an article. Hill noted that roughly a month later, the ABA did release the panel's slide deck and some takeaways from the discussion on Bookweb.

Another closed session was for BIPOC booksellers, with the idea being that there, too, attendees might not speak freely with press in attendance. Hill emphasized that while the ABA does its best to make events like Winter Institute accessible to press, the organization's "paramount responsibility" is to the protection and privacy of its members.

Cynthia Compton, ABA Board president, at yesterday's meeting

Discussing the lack of an in-person Community Forum, Hill said the decision to remove it from the schedule was a result of member feedback related to the 2024 and 2025 forums. The decision was discussed with the ABA board, with board president Cynthia Compton calling it a "community conversation" between the board and ABA leadership.

Hill reported that most feedback about the lack of a forum has been positive, and when asked if there was any intention to bring the forum back to next year's conference, Hill stressed she was "100% committed" to having the digital Community Forum every year. When it comes to Winter Institute specifically, Hill said the ABA is always looking for "opportunities to create community," but she did not say exactly what form that will take.

Kenny Brechner, owner of Devany Doak & Garrett Booksellers in Farmington, Maine, brought up what he described as a disparity between the ABA's end policies and its bylaws that pertains to Bookshop.org and the 30% affiliate rate ABA members receive. The ends policies, he noted, define regular or core members as stores primarily selling new books, yet he has seen used bookstores join the ABA and receive the 30% affiliate rate on Bookshop. In his view, this "allows for competition against regular members within local economies" and lets used bookstores enjoy the same benefits as new stores without having the same relationships with publishers and distributors and being part of the independent channel. 

Compton called the situation nuanced, and shared that about 9% of ABA members identify as selling used merchandise, while more than 30% identify as selling new and used. At the same time, the ABA has seen stores join as used bookstores and add more new books over time, or start out as wholly new and gradually bring in more and more used. Hill said the point would be discussed when the board next reviews the association's ends policies.

On the subject of working to secure better discounts from publishers, Hill said the ABA has "different levers" it can use to potentially get there. Historically, one of those levers was a lawsuit, filed after members brought evidence to the ABA of antitrust violations on the part of publishers. That lever, however, can only be pulled "if there is evidence," and the ABA hasn't seen any sign of "nefarious" activity going on.

A much bigger lever, Hill said, is data. At the moment, indies cannot create a "complete picture" of the channel, and that fact is "hurting us" in conversations with publishers, she explained. Hill and Compton encouraged members to participate in ABACUS, sign up for BATCH, and take advantage of things like Indies First. All of these, Hill said, can help show publishers the value of the indie channel as well the benefit of investing in that channel.

In response to a question about use cases for cutting costs or growing revenue using AI, Hill said she has spent a lot of time talking about best practices with booksellers who are using AI, and the ABA is working on an education series about AI tentatively planned for this summer. She emphasized that this is about assistive AI, not generative AI, and said there might be opportunities for using the former while continuing to champion work made by human beings. --John Mutter & Alex Mutter

Wisp Bookshop, which has been operating as a fantasy-focused mobile bookstore since last spring, will host a grand opening celebration June 7 in its new bricks-and-mortar location at 24 West Main St., Middletown, Del. Founded by Alina Pfeifer, Wisp Bookshop "was created to bring fantasy lovers together through thoughtfully curated books, cozy community events, and a sense of wonder that invites readers of all ages to feel at home," Hoy en Delaware reported. 

"As someone who has always found comfort and connection through books, I wanted to create a space where people could gather, discover new stories, and feel like they belong," said Pfeifer. "Wisp is more than a bookstore. It's a community for people who love magic, adventure, and storytelling."

In addition to a book selection ranging from epic fantasy and romantasy to young adult adventures and beloved classics, Wisp Bookshop plans to host book clubs, themed events, author gatherings, and community experiences throughout the year.

Purrs and Pages, a bookstore and cat cafe, will open June 5 in Ocala, Fla., 352Today reported. Located at 1216 E. Silver Springs Blvd., Purrs and Pages will have the bookstore and cafe in the front, and the cat lounge in the back. 

The bookstore will carry plenty of cat-themed books, along with art, gifts, and a variety of merchandise, while the cafe will serve bottled drinks and pastries. The cat lounge, which guests will be able to access via timed reservations, will feature around four resident cats along with 12-15 cats available for adoption from local rescue organizations. The store's event plans include cat yoga, bingo nights, meditation classes, and children's storytime sessions.

Co-owners Amanda Damron and Matt Gray were inspired to open Purrs and Pages after visiting cat cafes in other parts of Florida. They wanted to open a family-friendly business and gathering place in Ocala's east side, while also helping local animal shelters with overcrowding.

"We wanted to give people the experience of it as well as helping out the shelters and community, help the cats find forever homes," Gray told 352Today.

"Everything is cat-themed," said Damron. "We have tons of cat-themed books. We also have pretend kitty cats, if you can't adopt a real one." 

The owners noted that they are not planning to have a large grand opening, as it would likely disturb the cats.

David Henderson, the poet and author "who rose to prominence with the pathbreaking Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and went on to write a bestselling biography of Jimi Hendrix that changed the way many interpreted Hendrix's life, music, and untimely end," died May 14, the New York Times reported. He was 83.

The Harlem-born poet was a central figure in the founding in 1962 of the Society of Umbra, a pioneering Black literary collective based in Manhattan's East Village. The Times noted that like Calvin Hernton, Tom Dent, Lorenzo Thomas, Askia Touré, Steve Cannon, and others associated with the group, Henderson "sought to forge a new, distinctly Black aesthetic sensibility, unmoored from white Western artistic ideals."

"We were shut out of the discourse," he recalled in a 2009 interview with Africultures, a French news and culture website. "That exclusion is what Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Hayden, James Baldwin, were fighting."

Umbra became a foundation for the broader Black Arts Movement, which emerged in the mid-1960s and was led by writers such as LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), Lawrence Neal, and Touré. The group also included people from the visual arts, theater, dance, and music.

"We were the revolutionaries," said poet and playwright Ishmael Reed, adding that no longer did Black writers find it necessary to follow the narrative conventions of an Ernest Hemingway or Henry James. "We broke with that. We went to folklore, and to the street."

Henderson channeled the hope and rage of the civil rights era, drawing from Black oral traditions and the rhythms of rock 'n' roll, Motown, and jazz, the Times noted, quoting lines from the title poem of his 1970 collection De Mayor of Harlem:

silent natives screaming
thru western guns swords axes
tall tenor saxophones
blaring black trumpet
pages of swords.

Henderson left home as a teenager and moved to the East Village to pursue poetry. "This was the early 1960s," he later recalled. "Change was happening before our eyes, but I'm not certain I saw it." In the early 1970s, he was hired to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, the first of several academic positions he held over the years. 

Soon after arriving in California, he began a five-year quest to complete a book on Hendrix, whom he had written about previously for the rock magazine Crawdaddy. "I had gotten to know Hendrix a little bit in the clubs in Manhattan, hanging out," Henderson once recalled in a video interview, "and I told him I was going to write something about him." 

His friendship with Hendrix "helped open doors, spurring many who had been close to the guitar legend to open up, including his father, Al Hendrix," the Times noted. Henderson also gained access to Hendrix's personal diaries, private correspondence and home recordings.

Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child of the Aquarian Age was published in 1978. (It was later expanded and retitled 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child.) "The book stood out among rock biographies for its New Journalism-style narrative approach, which included flowery poetic passages and--to the chagrin of some critics--recreated inner monologues and other devices reminiscent of fiction," the Times wrote.

The biography also challenged accepted views of the circumstances leading to Hendrix's death in 1970. Henderson concluded that Hendrix did not die of a drug overdose, but was drowned, and contended that other forces, including organized crime and federal agencies, had motives to harm the musician.

Henderson also wrote that Hendrix came to embrace Black power every bit as much as flower power: "Jimi Hendrix was a classic Black ghetto 'smoothie,' whose genius was electric guitar. He achieved an unmatched virtuoso style and became a musician's musician, a player's player, and a priest of the new age in Afro-American ceremonial music."

Newtonville Books hosted an event with Jayne Anne Phillips and Tom Perrotta to celebrate their newest releases: Small Town Girls (Knopf) and Ghost Town (Scribner), respectively, at the West Newton Cinema on Sunday, May 24. General manager Nick Petrulakis reported, "It was a packed house and a terrific conversation! Ms. Phillips was especially pleased as she had never read from any of her works in a theater before."

Posted on Instagram by Powell's Books in Portland, Ore.: "Meet Nan, the Queen of the Quote at Powell's Books on Hawthorne. Every Tuesday Nan changes the inspiring literary quotes on the 'Quote Board' behind the information desk as you enter, and it's won some fans. One created a poem about an entry, another takes photos of it to share to friends around the country. Sometimes it's poetry, sometimes it's from a classic. We ask Nan what she looks for, and get her reaction to her new unofficial title. Next time you're at Hawthorne, see what Nan's cooked up."

"Just us, hanging out (!) on a lazy afternoon and updating inventory!" Sabu's Books in Columbia, Mo., posted on Facebook. 

BookPeople, Austin, Tex., shared photos of one of the bookshop's themed sales floor displays, noting: "Climate fiction (or cli-fi) is defined as fiction centering around climate change and other environmental factors, often speculative, dystopian, and/or utopian in nature. Here are some must-reads we recommend for anybody interested in this genre that is becoming unfortunately less and less fictional.⁠ What books would you add to our list?"

Chris Dufault has been named senior v-p, director of adult retail sales, at Penguin Random House. He has held a variety of leadership positions in sales and publishing during his 23-year career at PRH and was most recently senior v-p, publishing, sales, and operations strategy, for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

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In the Random House Publishing Group:

Emily Isayeff has been named director of publicity, Ballantine Bantam Dell.

Caro Perny has been named publicity director, genre specialist, a newly created role in the Group publicity team.

New production photos have been released, offering a first look at the world premiere play-with-music Girl, Interrupted, based on the Susanna Kaysen's bestselling 1993 memoir, Playbill reported. The production is currently in previews at Off-Broadway's Public Theater before its June 4 opening night in the company's Martinson Hall. 

Directed by Jo Bonney and written by Martyna Majok (Cost of Living), the work's extended run will continue through June 28. Aimee Mann, formerly of Til Tuesday, wrote the music, which also comprised her most recent album, Queens of the Summer Hotel.

The cast includes Juliana Canfield (Stereophonic), King Princess, Emily Skinner (Suffs), Ta'Rea Campbell, Gabi Campo, Manoel Felciano, Mia Pak, Katherine Reis, Sally Shaw, and Lauren Jeanne Thomas. 

David E. Kelley (The Lincoln Lawyer) is adapting another Michael Connelly crime novel, the 2024 bestseller Nightshade, for television. Deadline reported that the project, titled Welcome to Catalina, is in development at HBO Max "under the streamer's model for drama procedurals intended to return each year with sizable orders and moderate cost. The model was introduced by the Emmy-winning medical drama The Pitt, which produces 15 episodes a year."

Written by Kelley, Welcome to Catalina centers on Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Stilwell, "who has been 'exiled' to a low-key post policing rustic Catalina Island. But while following up the usual drunk-and-disorderlies and petty thefts that come with his new territory, Stilwell gets a report of a body found weighed down at the bottom of the harbor," Deadline noted.

Kelley executive produces with Matt Tinker, president of David E. Kelley Productions, as well as The Lincoln Lawyer team of A+E Studios' Barry Jossen and Tana Jamieson, Ross Fineman of Ross Fineman Entertainment and Connelly. HBO Max is the lead studio, with A+E Studios as co-studio.

The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation has released a shortlist for the £10,000 (about $13,445) Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, which is open to writers of any nationality writing in English. The winner will be named September 17 in London. This year's shortlisted titles are:

The Tarot Reader of Versailles by Anya Bergman 
Boudicca's Daughter by Elodie Harper 
Esperance by Adam Oyebanji 
The Fertile Earth by Ruthvika Rao 
White Road by Harry Whitehead 
Poor Girls by Clare Whitfield 

In this 10th anniversary year, the foundation has moved to working with books from the point they're published in paperback. Following research and feedback focused on impact and accessibility, the foundation said it believes "that our mission to connect the best adventure novels of today with new readers can be best achieved at this point in a book's life and we're excited to see what impact this may have."

Also being celebrated at the awards ceremony will be the New Voices award for aspiring writers and the Author of Tomorrow award for writers aged 21 years and under who have completed a short piece of adventure writing.

photo: Mayumi Takada

Warren Liu is a professor of English at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif. He is the author of First Contact (Kaya Press, May 26, 2026), a formally experimental and absurdist mock-epic poem that melds speculative fiction and travel writing.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

First Contact is a mock-epic narrative poem that uses conceits from speculative fiction to explore popular tropes of--you guessed it--first contact.

On your nightstand now:

I enjoy assigning myself somewhat arbitrary rule-based reading projects. Right now, I'm trying to read my way through as much of the New York Review Books catalog as I can get my hands on, but only those titles I can borrow from my college library or that I happen to find in a local bookstore, preferably used. So, on my shelf right now:

Bruce Duffy, The World as I Found It
Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station
Álvaro Mutis, The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll (translated by Edith Grossman)
Elizabeth Hardwick, The New York Stories of Elizabeth Hardwick
J.A. Baker, The Peregrine
Magda Szabó, Iza's Ballad (translated by George Szirtes)
Tove Jansson, The Summer Book (translated by Thomas Teal)

Favorite book when you were a child:

So many! But a couple stand out, the first being William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble. Such a delightfully weird and sweet book. I remember being completely terrified by the idea of accidentally wishing oneself into a boulder, immobile and mute but fully conscious. The second would be Richard Adams's Watership Down, because, in addition to the marvelous way the book depicts the inner lives of rabbits, it's also how I first learned that my name is also a noun describing a colony of rabbits.

Your top five authors:

It's hard to name a top five of all time, so instead I'll just list those that I've most recently been obsessed with, and why. László Krasznahorkai, for his propulsive and endless sentences; Aurel Stein, for the sheer romance of late-19th-century archeology as it provides cover for its baser instincts (i.e., looting); Lafcadio Hearn, because he describes Japan in a way that is at once gorgeous and totally wacky; Lorine Niedecker, for her unparalleled mastery of diction, syntax, and lineation in the long poem; and Ursula K. Le Guin, for The Dispossessed.

Book you've faked reading:

So many! I'd say almost anything falling under the category of early American literature. I've certainly faked my way through many classes in which I was ostensibly teaching students about Phyllis Wheatley, for example. I've also definitely never read the entirety of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, even though in the past I've also been tasked with teaching that, which went poorly.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Sesshu Foster's Atomik Aztex. There is a pierced-by-arrows scene in this novel that is one of the most poignantly hilarious passages I've ever read; more generally, Foster's use of humor as a tool of resistance was a main source of inspiration for First Contact.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Most recently, Joe Boyd's And the Roots of Rhythm Remain. It's a cool cover, but the content is cool too.

Book you hid from your parents:

My parents were both readers and happy that I was rather nerdish, so I never had to hide anything from them. They did express concern at one point when I was in high school, reading a lot of Raymond Carver and writing stories filled with depressive alcoholics living in suburban melancholy. But I think that might have been more a concern over my aesthetic choices rather than the reading material itself.

Book that changed your life:

It's hard to answer this one because for me it's never an entire book that is impactful, it's usually a passage, theme, or character. If I had to pinpoint only one title, though, it would be Li-Young Lee's debut collection of poetry, Rose, which was the first book that opened my eyes to the idea of Asian American poetry as a definable thing.

Favorite line from a book:

"Italy is just a trap we bumble into if we're stupendously dumb." --from Robert Walser's The Tanners. I've always loved this line even though I no longer remember its context or anything else about the book from which it comes. I think it's the "bumble"/"dumb" rhyme that gets me--all those m's and b's, very delightful.

Five books you'll never part with:

I am not sentimental about books so do not find it hard to let go of them (theoretically). But if you were to rob me of my entire library, leaving me a choice of only five to keep, they would be the ones that have to do with my kids in one way or another:

Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks from A to Z (the apple-shaped one, much loved by my sons)

Little Fur Family by Margaret Wise Brown (with fur cover, of course)

The Goldilocks Variations: A Pop-Up Book by Allan Ahlberg, illustrated by Jessica Ahlberg (a family favorite--we wore this one out!)

Call Me Ishmael by Charles Olson (a signed copy, which my daughter and I found in the $1 bin at our local library)

Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson (another find while used bookstore browsing with the kids; I'm quite fond of my family, used bookstores, and donkeys, so this was a nice trifecta moment)

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Absalom, Absalom! by Willam Faulkner. What I love about Faulkner is the way his novels continually upend our expectations of narrative time. The experience is one of being constantly displaced; formally, the book itself teaches you how to read it as you go. You get to the end somehow and are amazed that you got there, that it's the end. It's hard to recapture that experience a second time.

The 11 stories in Emily Doyle's bracing debut collection, Please Don't Touch the Body, vibrate with undercurrents of guilty desire, delicious rage, and the bewildering mysteries of the underworld. Motherhood and its discontents connect the characters across lush villas, stark hospital rooms, an oyster farm, and multiple Petco locations, while Doyle's dark, dazzling humor offsets the absurdity of life.

In "The Diver," a mother shattered by divorce struggles to reconnect with her son, battling the urge to "duck out of sight" when he approaches. A professional diver, she finds that her sadness vanishes only when she is underwater. When she and her son befriend an octopus on a submerged adventure, it unlocks something profound between them. One cannot be certain that their revived bond will endure, but it's clear the episode will be a high point in the young man's life.

Doyle's writing, elegant and mesmerizing, results in a curious, alluring combination of high drama and supernatural mystery. The daughter in "The Only Child" is devoted to caring for her aged parent yet feels as if her existence is a stream running "not alongside her mother's life but underneath it." In "Thursdays for Haru," a husband's abduction by aliens affords his wife the solitude and space to rediscover "that dangerous part" of herself she had subdued in service of domestic harmony. The title story, set in the same retirement home featured in an earlier story, lures readers into a young woman's devastating confrontation with her client's dead lover.

Mothers are present even when they are not part of the action, as in "Thank You No Thank You" wherein two law students are on a day trip to an oyster farm. Jen is afraid of becoming her mother, "not understanding I was her already." On the eve of accepting a prestigious law firm position, she worries she'll sink into a life not in her control. Although she has been liberated from her family's cloistered religious world, is she walking into a future where she must once again pretend to fit in? Convinced she has stomach cancer, Jen is relieved she has to go on pretending only until the disease takes over. One can't help but be fascinated with this woman and her eager embrace of illness as salvation.

Spanning an impressively diverse demographic range, Doyle's characters seek and often find relief from life's demands by turning inward, succumbing to the seductive allure of their own startlingly active imaginations. --Shahina Piyarali

Shelf Talker: Motherhood and its discontents loom large in this mesmerizing debut story collection combining high drama with supernatural mystery and characters spanning a diverse demographic range.