"I never thought about becoming a bookseller," said Kelly McMasters, co-owner of Moody Road Studios in the small town of Honesdale, Pa. "It wasn't a goal or a dream. I just missed having [a bookstore] so much and realized that if I didn't do it, no one else was going to."
McMasters spent 15 years in New York City as an author, magazine editor and writing teacher at Columbia University and New York University before relocating full-time to northeast Pennsylvania with her husband and two children. Honesdale, which she described as charming and surprisingly artsy but "very rural," had no local bookstore, and the closest was 80 miles away.
"I was one of those kids who really, really needed a bookshop," explained McMasters, who grew up in a Long Island town that had no local bookstore. "I found refuge in the library, but a library is very different from an independent bookshop. I wanted my kids to have a bookstore."
McMasters and her husband, artist Mark Milroy, opened Moody Road Studios last December, in a 250-square-foot space within a larger complex containing, among other things, a cheese shop and art gallery. Although the interior of the store is small, they can comfortably accommodate up to 50 customers in a back garden. At present, McMasters and Milroy are the store's only employees.
"The idea behind the store is works on paper; when you come in, it's all about the love of paper," McMasters said. "The books I choose for my shop are the kinds of things that I can't imagine reading on an e-reader."
Included in that category are picture books, poetry collections, photo books and extravagant editions of fiction and nonfiction, along with art made by her husband. At first, McMasters was not sure how customers would respond to the heavily curated selection, but quickly found that the Honesdale community had a need for serious literature, nonfiction and poetry that had gone drastically underserved.
"I was amazed when people walked in," said McMasters. "It makes me feel very optimistic and positive for the state of books."
While living in New York, McMasters ran the KGB Bar's nonfiction reading series, and has brought that expertise to Honesdale through the store's summer reading series. Beginning in May, Moody Road Studios has hosted monthly events featuring a range of fiction and nonfiction writers, memoirists and poets, who include and will include Rosie Schaap, author of Drinking with Men, Carolyn Turgeon, author of The Fairest of Them All, and Leigh Newman, author of Still Points North.
Although she initially had no idea how the readings would be received, McMasters has been thrilled by the turnout and great questions, she said, and plans to continue the reading series through October. The store also serves as a meeting place for a number of community book clubs, and McMasters teaches monthly classes on memoir and young adult writing. She also writes about her experience in a monthly column for the Paris Review.
McMasters hopes eventually to expand the store's writing classes into conferences, and help the area's artist community continue to thrive. Before opening the store, she said, "I had no idea who else was in these hills. It's pretty wild how many like-minded people are up here. It shows there can be a really vibrant artist community outside of New York; you don't have to sit in your barn and write without a community. There just needs to be a hub." --Alex Mutter