Congratulations to Bookworks, Albuquerque, N.Mex., which celebrated its 40th birthday last Saturday with a day of sales and surprises for customers, as well as a big party. Local authors, store staff, and community partners all gathered to toast four decades of books and events. The store commissioned a special 40th anniversary T-shirt and the party centerpiece was a cake decorated with that design.
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| Co-owners Nancy Guinn (left) and Shannon Guinn-Collins (center) joined by store founder Nancy Rutland (right) | |
Bookworks opened in October 1984, in a tiny shopping plaza in Albuquerque's north valley. Over the next 25 years, founder Nancy Rutland tripled the size of the store, hosted many events, and engaged the local community. Her first-ever national author event brought in Martha Stewart and included erecting a large "wedding tent" in the parking lot to showcase Stewart's book. Other events included Steven King in conversation with George R.R. Martin, Margaret Atwood, Tom Robbins, and Anthony Doerr. Rutland sold the store to Danielle Foster and Wyatt Wegrzyn, who owned it for 13 years, building a children's program and shepherding the store through Covid. The community rallied to ensure the store would survive the pandemic by buying books online.
In 2023, Shannon Guinn-Collins and Nancy Guinn, with the help of 13 community investors, purchased the store. They expanded the inventory and refreshed the interior, including commissioning whimsical murals from a beloved local artist. Bookworks restarted events, beginning with a reading by all of the poets laureate of Albuquerque and New Mexico. Since then, Joy Harjo, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Colson Whitehead, Ann Napolitano, and Christopher Paolini, among others, have traveled to Albuquerque to read. The store continues to build and maintain community partnerships with many groups, including the Leopold Writing Program, the Albuquerque Library Foundation, the Native American Community Academy and Read to Me, a non-profit that distributes books in food banks, city buses, and laundromats.