Black English Bookstore will hold its community grand opening on December 2 at 401 E. Oak Ave., Tampa, Fla. Spectrum Bay News 9 reported that the bookshop "is the brainchild of Tampa City Council member Gwen Henderson. It's an idea Henderson came up with when she realized the need for more representation in showcasing Black literature."

"Ninety-eight percent of the books are African American or Black-authored books," Henderson said of her bookstore. "People are going to enter this store maybe thinking about a book and then taking other books into consideration that they haven't thought about, which all is housed in one location."

She added that this was all part of her plan when she dreamed up Black English Bookstore in Tampa Heights: "I am an educator, so everything I do is gonna stem from that background even in city council. I come from a teacher's perspective. And so the programming that exists for this bookstore is designed that way for our organizations to be the driving force behind children entering this space or books being taken to them."

Henderson took the idea of opening a bookshop to her students in a high school entrepreneurship class. "I decided, 'Let me do the assignment with you all and I'm gonna create a bookstore,' " she recalled. "So I pitched my store to teenagers. And that's kinda scary, girl, because they have an opinion." 

The name of the store came to her while she was reading the essay "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?" by James Baldwin and thought: "Oh my gosh, the name of my bookstore is Black English."

Banned books do not exist in her shop, she noted: "I don't have to play a narrative that someone else has decided this book is not worthy. And it's just so sad, especially when you look at the choices. There's some tough books out there and parents should know what their children are reading, but banning a book about 'I love my hair' is ridiculous."

Everyone is welcome at Black English bookstore, Henderson said, especially those who are curious and want to support an indie bookstore: "I'm building the store that I want to go to."

Dog Ear Books in Russellville, Ark., has officially reopened in its new home, with owner Emily Young and her team hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony earlier this month and a reopening celebration on Small Business Saturday that included a prize wheel, a special Small Biz coffee, baked goods, and more.

Young described the new space, at 312 W. 2nd St., as "the perfect spot." It is larger than the bookstore's previous home, allowing Young and her team to create a dedicated events space as well as include the coffee shop Retro Roasts, which used to be located in a separate storefront. The store layout is also more interesting--instead of one big room, there are "a lot more cozy nooks and rooms to wander through."

The main reason for the move, Young explained, was being able to consolidate the two businesses. It has helped save on rent and utilities, and the events space is a plus. Young also noted that so far, "the move has helped increase our sales too. Which is always a good thing!"

During the move, "our crew was phenomenal," Young added. "We couldn't have done it without them."

Andrew Miller (photo: Michael Lionstar)

Andrew Miller has been named president and publisher of Henry Holt, effective in mid-January. He is currently v-p, editorial director, nonfiction, at Knop and earlier held editorial roles at Vintage/Anchor Books as well as at Grove/Atlantic and St. Martin’s Press. He will take over from Jamie Raab, publisher-at-large, who has been leading Holt on an interim basis since August, when Amy Einhorn left to become senior v-p, publisher, Crown Fiction.

Miller has worked with such authors as John Carreyrou, George Packer, Casey Cep, Ken Burns, Bill Clinton, Cat Bohannon, and others. His bestselling titles include Bad Blood; Eve: How the Female Body Shaped 200 Million Years of Human History; The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession; Built to Move: The Ten Essential Habits to Move Freely and Live Fully; Traffic; Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World; Furious Hours; Gettysburg; and Inferno.

Jon Yaged, CEO of Macmillan Publishers, said, "From the moment I met Andrew, I knew he was the perfect person to lead Holt into the future. He is universally respected and has impeccable, wide-ranging taste. His passion for books and overall curiosity are contagious and matched only by his enthusiasm for collaboration, mentorship and elevating extraordinary writers. His personal success publishing outstanding nonfiction and his appreciation for smart, upmarket fiction match perfectly with Holt's more than 150-year legacy. I couldn't be happier to welcome Andrew to Holt and Macmillan."

Miller said, "I'm deeply honored and excited to be entrusted with the leadership of Henry Holt, a storied publisher with a long history of first-rate authors and books. It's not easy to leave a special place like Knopf, especially after 22 years, but this is the opportunity of a lifetime, and I am thrilled to join the exceptional team at Holt and Macmillan. I look forward to working with everyone to continue building a dynamic and ambitious list of nonfiction and fiction titles."

Sad news: after more than 40 years in book publishing, our good friend John Bohman has decided to take Penguin Random House's voluntary separation offer and will retire as senior v-p, sales & customer operations, effective December 15.

John Bohman

After working at a bookstore and a small publisher, Bohman joined Ingram in 1990, where he rose to v-p of sales in 1998. In 2000, he moved to retailer Crown Books. A year later, he joined Random House in the newly created position of v-p of customer operations. Over the years, his work expanded to include the improvement of the physical book supply chain as well as e-books, downloadable audio, print-on-demand, metadata feeds, order technology, POS and inventory reporting, BookScan, and more.

Jaci Updike, PRH's chief revenue officer, said, "From day one, John has understood that one of the best ways we can serve our books and authors is to strengthen our behind-the-scenes systems and processes. Operational issues are often what make the crucial difference to how successful and profitable our retail and wholesale accounts are, and John has built a team that works creatively and brilliantly to develop solutions that speed our books to market and make Penguin Random House a publisher that our partners can trust and count on for operational support and guidance.

"One of John's hallmark strengths is his incredible empathy for our customers point of view. His deep knowledge of customer technology and needs, coupled with his unflagging optimism and strong belief that through collaboration, we can always find a solution, has benefitted countless retailers and wholesalers.

"That empathy, of course, extends to his colleagues. In addition to his outstanding work with operations, John has played a key role in building a culture that embraces change and honors the ideas and contributions of staff across a variety of positions and roles. From brainstorming with colleagues in the early days of the Penguin and Random House merger, to spending time with reps at sales conference tossing around what-if scenarios, to working with staff at the fulfillment centers on myriad improvement projects, John has always been an enthusiastic listener, who leads through building consensus.

"On a personal note, John and I have been close colleagues and good friends for many years now. I've been in deep denial about his upcoming retirement as I depend on him so much. The truth though is that I am thrilled for him and his family. His wonderful wife, Holly, his children, and his grandchildren, deserve to get all the parts of John's time that we have had the benefit of. We will miss him, greatly."

---

In related changes, as of today, senior v-p, sales strategic planning Julie Black will now head the sales & customer operations team. In addition, Jessica Wells has been promoted to v-p, customer operations & strategy, and Thea James has been promoted to v-p, customer operations.

Wells joined the company from HarperCollins in 2012 as senior manager, digital customer operations, handling all operational aspects of e-book customer relationships. In 2016, she moved to physical customer operations as director, customer operations, and in 2020 she was promoted to senior director, customer operations.

James joined the company from Workman in 2017. She is also a successful published author of three books and runs a Hugo Award-winning science fiction fanzine.

Tim Dorsey

Tim Dorsey, author of the bestselling Florida-set series starring Serge A. Storms, died November 26 at age 62.

Dorsey wrote more than 25 books, most of which featured the darkly funny Storms, who is obsessive, psychopathic, schizophrenic, sometimes homicidal but who has a strong sense of moral absolutism and justice, and his stoner sidekick, Seymour "Coleman" Bunsen. Dorsey's first title was Florida Roadkill, published in 1999. He then published at least one book a year, including February's The Maltese Iguana. Dorsey also wrote Squall Lines: Selected Articles and Essays. His longtime publisher was William Morrow.

After working as a police and courts reporter for the Alabama Journal, he joined the Tampa Tribune, where over 12 years he held a variety of positions, including as a political reporter and night metro editor. In 1999, Dorsey resigned to write full time.

Emily Krump, Dorsey's editor at Morrow, said, "It was a privilege and honor to work with Tim Dorsey. His easy wit and deep knowledge of Florida lore made his satirical crime capers as entertaining as they were timely. But his greatest gift was the boundless joy and escape that Serge A. Storms brought to readers on every page. Tim was smart, kind, and loved his family and his fans. He will be missed."

Retired Simon & Schuster rep Jim Barkley remembered Dorsey as "always a gentleman, kind and very cordial. He was one of my favorite authors, and many, many others felt the same way about Tim. He loved his state of Florida."

Bookshop Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, Calif., hosted Dr. Temple Grandin for Different Kinds of Minds (Philomel), the young readers edition of her bestseller Visual Thinking, adapted by Ann D. Koffsky. More than 225 people attended the sold-out offsite event, with many more on the wait list. Pictured: events staffer Robyn Pearson, events director Chorel Centers, Temple Grandin, schools outreach coordinator Holly Vooorsanger, and bookseller Saya Bolda.

Inspired perhaps by the popularity of silent book clubs, Vintage Books and Wine, Austin, Tex., shared a video on Instagram demonstrating the shop's latest promotional idea: "Silent book reviews! In summary: read. these. books."

"Rob and I are pretty proud of our holiday window. I just need a small sleigh to finish it off," Dragon Tale Books, Menomonie, Wis., posted on Instagram.

"Come see me on this sunny day!" the Story Collective, St. Joseph, Mo., noted in sharing a photo of the shop's extremely logical sidewalk chalkboard message: "World's closest bookstore."

Ingram's Two Rivers Distribution is now the exclusive global distributor for print books for Podium, which publishes primarily e-books and digital audiobooks.

With headquarters in Los Angeles, Podium calls itself "the fastest growing digital publisher in North America" and focuses on genre fiction, particularly science fiction, fantasy, and romance as well as the sub-genres of GameLit, LitRPG, progression fantasy, and more. Podium also owns Bookstat, "the only real-time platform tracking online sales of physical books, e-books, and audiobooks."

Podium CEO Scott Dickey said, "Our mission of supporting trendsetting storytellers is at the forefront of our growth strategy for Podium so it made perfect sense to expand our capabilities beyond digital formats and into physical retail outlets in collaboration with Two Rivers."

Podium publisher Victoria Gerken added: "With a digital-first mindset that supports the cadence of modern storytelling, adding retail print distribution opens up an avenue of sales to expand the reach of our authors and grow their fanbases."

Today:
Fresh Air: Rachel Maddow, author of Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism (Crown, $32, 9780593444511).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Mike Massimino, author of Moonshot: A NASA Astronaut's Guide to Achieving the Impossible (Hachette Go, $27, 9780306832642).

Matt Smith (Doctor Who) is starring in and executive producing an adaptation of Nick Cave's novel, The Death of Bunny Munro. Deadline reported that the project is being written by BAFTA-winning screenwriter Pete Jackson (Somewhere Boy) for indie Clerkenwell Films (End of the F***ing World), in association with Sky Studios. Cave will exec produce with Smith and others.

"To work alongside Nick Cave feels like a great honor," said Smith. "It's a brilliant exploration of love, grief, and chaos. At its heart a deep, difficult, and tender story about a father and son, coping with loss and change."

The series will begin filming in Spring 2024 in the south of England and will be available on Sky Atlantic and streaming service NOW in the U.K. NBCUniversal Global Distribution is handling international sales of the series on behalf of Sky Studios.

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell has been chosen as Waterstones Book of the Year 2023. "This is as close to perfect as fiction gets: immaculate world-building, dazzling storytelling, and adventure galore," Bea Carvalho, head of books, said. "Rundell isn't afraid to trust young readers with weighty themes, but never loses sight of the need to make reading joyous and fun, celebrating humor with as much care as awe and wonder. It is an immediate classic which children will delight in for years to come, and which will remind adults of the genius to be found within the pages of children's books."

In Memoriam by Alice Winn was named Waterstones Novel of the Year, "with our booksellers' deep and abiding love for Alice Winn's breathtaking World War I-set book only too evident," the company noted. "A cinematic tale of slow-burning romance amidst the horrors of the trenches, In Memoriam finds hope and transcendence in humanity's darkest times through the complex relationship between Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood, as they trade their idyllic boarding school for the Western Front. A moving and truly unforgettable reading experience, In Memoriam is fully deserving of the multitude of praise that has been lavished upon it."

Waterstones Gift of the Year was Murdle by G.T. Karber, a "collection of one hundred murder mystery puzzles helmed by the inscrutable Deductive Logico. Marrying its author's fondness for classic crime to a fiendish intellectual challenge reminiscent of Wordle or Sudoku, Murdle invokes codes, maps, illustrations and more to create the perfect gift for all armchair detectives and fans of whodunits," Waterstones noted.

Rodrigo Jardón

Jazmina Barrera, editor and co-founder of Ediciones Antílope, was a fellow at the Foundation for Mexican Letters and at Mexico's Fonca's Program for young writers. She is a member of the SNCA (National System of Art Creators in Mexico) and has published work in the Paris Review, El Malpensante, Words Without Borders, El País, the New York Times and Electric Literature. She is the author of four books in Spanish, including Cuerpo extraño, Cuaderno de faros (On Lighthouses), which was chosen for the Indie Next list, and Linea Nigra, a finalist for several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle's Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize. Her novel Cross-Stitch (Two Lines Press, November 7, 2023) is, in the words of Shelf Awareness's review, a "feminist, intertextual gem... [that] considers friendship and grief alongside women's work."

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Cross-Stitch is the story of three friends, embroidered with fragments about the different roles that embroidery has had for communities of women across the ages.

On your nightstand now:

Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities by Marcia Bjornerud. I'm writing a book with my friend Paulina Deschamps about the names of mountains, and that's why I'm reading (and loving) it. Suddenly every stone around me is a precious stone.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. It opened my eyes to the ways in which language creates realities. It moved me and filled my mind with a rich and amazing universe. It is one of the few books I know where the colors of letters are meaningful.

Your top five authors:

Don't do this to me! Okay:

Virginia Woolf
Natalia Ginzburg
Julian Barnes
Verónica Murguía
Elena Garro

Book you've faked reading:

Recently, a book I had to blurb. Someone with great taste close to me, who had read it, wrote it on my behalf. I won't tell you which. I hate the empire of blurbs. Never trust blurbs.

Book you're an evangelist for:

El Ángel de Nicolás by Verónica Murguía. A collection of mind-blowing, wonderfully crafted short stories. She still hasn't been translated into English, and she's one of the best writers we've got.

Book you've bought for the cover:

The Dark by Lemony Snicket [illustrated by Jon Klassen]. I didn't know it was already a modern classic. I'm a children's books junkie since my son was born.

Book you hid from your parents:

Very hippie parents. There was nothing to hide. Though maybe the books I wrote about them, for a while.

Book that changed your life:

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I was planting a vegetable garden for the first time when I read it, and I was obsessed for a while. Everyone should read that.

Favorite line from a book:

Lately it's this one, from Mary Shelley's Introduction to Frankenstein: "Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos."

Five books you'll never part with:

Balún Canán by Rosario Castellanos
Plainwater by Anne Carson
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra
Butes by Pascal Quignard

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

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. I'd like to fall in love with the Glass family all over again.

In her memoir, My Side of the River, Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez tells a powerful, often heartbreaking story of being a "first gen" child of undocumented immigrants, forced to find her own way at a young age. Camarillo Gutierrez strikes a tone both reflective and urgent as she chronicles a childhood lived between Mexico and Tucson, Ariz., and the practical and emotional challenges she faced when her parents' visas expired and they were unable to return to the U.S.

Camarillo Gutierrez shares the ups and downs of her family's experiences: her parents' struggles to navigate life, housing, and their children's education in a foreign language, and the limited career options available to them in the U.S. She writes vividly of her mother spending nights cleaning a movie theater, while her dad held at least one job that exposed him to potentially dangerous metals and other materials.

Camarillo Gutierrez and her younger brother, Fernando, were told to focus on their schoolwork; Camarillo Gutierrez's mother often told her, "You have to be the best." But when her parents were detained at the border, Camarillo Gutierrez suddenly became solely responsible for herself and Fernando, plus both of their educations. Before long, Fernando returned to Mexico to live with their parents, but Camarillo Gutierrez--determined to complete her education in Arizona--ended up sleeping on the couch of an acquaintance for months.

Camarillo Gutierrez describes the self-doubt, loneliness, and anxiety that plagued her, even as she remained a high-achieving high school student and received several prestigious awards. She charts her journey to pursuing undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, then her brother's return to the U.S. to live with her in New York while their parents (now separated) remained behind in Mexico. Camarillo Gutierrez writes about some of the people who helped her deal with tricky systems, fill in financial gaps, and find emotional support--but she makes no bones about it: being a young immigrant alone is tough. Being a young woman responsible for a younger sibling is tougher. And U.S. immigration policy--widely acknowledged as byzantine and broken--often leaves families like hers fractured, despite their best efforts to remain together. 

Building on her viral TED talk, My Side of the River cracks open the "bootstrap" narrative to reveal the costs of such intense self-reliance, and calls on American policymakers to reshape the policies that nearly broke Camarillo Gutierrez's family. Sharp, incisive, and often wryly funny, Camarillo Gutierrez's memoir is a necessary addition to the complex conversation around immigration in the U.S. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Shelf Talker: Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez's incisive memoir chronicles her experience as the high-achieving child of undocumented Mexican immigrants.

You're never too old to be in the spy game, even if you're a reader... or a bookseller. For reasons that shall remain classified (because I don't know what they are), I've been surrounded by old spies lately, chief among them the late John le Carré. Not only did I rewatch the 1982 TV series Smiley's People with Alec Guinness and the 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with Gary Oldman, but I also saw The Pigeon Tunnel, a new documentary in which le Carré parries the filmmaker's questions with the cool deftness of Smiley himself. 

In addition, I've been reading A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré, where I came across a 2013 letter to John and Mary James, owners of the Aldeburgh Bookshop in Aldeburgh, U.K. In the letter, le Carré writes: "As we confided in you, I am using Aldeburgh and the surrounding area as the setting for my novel, and it would be wonderful if we could spend a little time with you and drink in the atmosphere. I have a bookshop at the centre of my novel, and would love to pick your collective brains about the ups and downs of running one."

The bookshop eventually got its nod in le Carré's posthumously published novel, Silverview ("He undertakes a one-day pilgrimage to the nearby town of Aldeburgh, sits at the feet of the proprietors of an independent bookshop of national renown, talks festivals and book clubs, vows to study and learn. He comes away convinced he will never make the grade however many Sebalds he reads.")

Bookselling is a key to the plot of Silverview, beginning when a bookseller named Julian Lawndsley emerges "from the side door of his brand new shop," the basement of which will become something of a nest for spies. You just never know where the bookselling spy game may take you.

Where it takes Lawndsley, whose "lack of the basic literary education required of your upmarket bookseller was not to be repaired in a couple of months," is into creating the mysterious Republic of Literature, "a purposefully selected shrine to the most challenging minds of our time--and of all time." It is, of course, not what it seems to be. This is the spy game, after all.

"We think the 'small seaside town perched on the outer shores of East Anglia' in #johnlecarre new novel #silverview is #aldeburgh, don’t you? John le Carre visited us @aldebooks when doing his research," the Aldeburgh Bookshop TwiXed in 2021.

An old spy in a bookshop; I like the image. As it happens (inevitably, I've heard), I'm now older than Alec Guinness's George Smiley and much older than Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses, the brilliant Apple TV+ series based on Mick Herron's espionage novels. The series is about a team of misfit British intelligence agents exiled to Slough House, which serves as an MI5 dumping ground department for exiled agents due to their career-ending mistakes. 

I've now watched all three seasons of Slow Horses and read some of the books. The team is reluctantly led by disheveled, disgraced and--by MI5's less than infallible standards--disposable Jackson Lamb (Oldman), whose team building pep talks tend to run along the lines of: "Working with you has been the lowest point in a disappointing career."  

And since we're talking about aging members of the spy game here, it should be noted that 80-year-old honorary agent Mick Jagger, a fan of Herron's novels, co-wrote and performs the show's perfect theme song ("Surrounded by losers, misfits and boozers/ Hanging by your fingernails/ You made one mistake, you got burned at the stake/ You're finished, you're foolish, you failed"). 

"I empathize more with failures than I do with successes," Herron told the New York Times recently. "Looking back, I remain at a stage where I've been a failure for longer than I've been a success. So until it balances out, I'll always feel that way." 

Once upon a time, I was a young participant in the spy game, beginning in the mid-1960s when I started reading James Bond novels in high school. How deep the obsession became can be gleaned from a single piece of evidence in my file (aka high school yearbook), which for reasons of security (or insecurity) remains in my possession.

On page 52, there is a "Senior Class Prophecy," predicting what the graduating class of 1968--a class as ordinary as any in yearbooks throughout history--would be doing 50 years hence. The editorial staff looked into their crystal ball and wrote the following: "Bob Gray... famed critic of Ian Fleming." Hasn't happened yet, but the clock is still ticking.

Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb (courtesy Apple TV+)

"Lamb, she thought, would keep moving," Herron writes in Real Tigers, upon which the third season of Slow Horses is based. "Not the Lamb he was today, but the Lamb he'd been back whenever, living the life that had turned him into the Lamb he was today."

I used to think my life in the spy reading game was just a brief stretch of time in my youth, but the past is an incomplete dossier, destined to be lost in a battered file cabinet. Six decades later, I'm still at it. In Pigeon Tunnel, le Carré observed that "what I did was reinvent the secret world and fill it with my own people."