"Books have made me feel more, and they've granted me access to spaces and ideas I never would have encountered. In many ways, the sum of literature is the sacred for me, and without it I don't know where I would be. To imagine a world without books... impossible. And the same for indie bookstores, which are the very places that carry the sacredness of story. But who opens that door? The indie booksellers, the ones who give so much of their lives to making books available to people. I suppose what I'm saying is those indie booksellers (and anyone who is spending their life doing this kind of work) are the reason I am here. They're the storykeepers--the ones we, or at least I, need to keep going."
--Morgan Talty, whose novel Fire Exit (Tin House Books) is the #1 June Indie Next List pick, in a q&a with Bookselling This Week