Word Play Books, Wardenville, W.Va., and Loyalty Bookstores, Washington, D.C., and Silver Spring, Md., have won $250 grants from Parson Weems Publisher Services, the independent publishers rep group, given in honor of Linda Cannon, a rep with Parson Weems from 2003 until her death in 2019.
"Linda loved being a book sales rep and the business of publishing," Parson Weems said. "She truly enjoyed working with publishers, authors and, most of all, with her booksellers across the territory." In 2017, she received the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association's inaugural Kristin Keith Sales Rep of the Year Award.
Word Play Books is using its $250 grant, as co-owner Marlene England wrote in its application, "to support the work of our nonprofit, WordPlay Connects, which provides children in West Virginia's Potomac Highlands region with free books and the opportunity to meet authors and illustrators. So far this year, we've put more than 1,600 books in kids' hands--at no cost to families or schools. And since our nonprofit launched in 2022, we've donated more than 8,500 books to young West Virginians in the five-county region surrounding our bookstore in Wardensville. The $250 grant would help us purchase more books to give away this summer and fall at community events, including our new Tunes & Tales family concert series that features free music and free children's books. Access to books is extremely limited in our rural area--often there is only one public library to serve an entire county, and some libraries in elementary schools are being eliminated or staffed part-time by volunteers. Making it possible for kids to create home libraries from books they choose will boost literacy, as well as academic success and personal well-being."
Accepting for Loyalty Bookstores, co-owner Christine Bollow wrote that its grant will be used for "the inaugural Liwanag Filipino Lit Fest in D.C. this fall, which will be hosted by Loyalty Bookstores and is being planned by Loyalty/Christine, along with fellow queer Filipino community leaders and organizations in the D.C. area. Despite being the fourth-largest immigrant group in the U.S., Filipino authors, and Filipino creators in general, are vastly underrepresented in the literary scene and in the media at large. In partnership with our sister festival in California hosted by Bel Canto Books, our aim is to shine a lot on Filipino literature and provide a platform to champion FilAm authors. This grant will enable us to further our community outreach and strengthen relationships with Filipino American readers in the D.C. area."