Interview with Pen’rallt Gallery Bookshop

Machynlleth, an ancient market town in Mid-Wales, supports 4 bookshops: Dyfi Valley Bookshop (used and antiquarian books), Coch-y-Bonddu Books (angling, game shooting, sporting dogs and falconry), the newly opened Literary Cat Books, and Pen’rallt Gallery Bookshop — opened by Diane Bailey and Geoff Young ten years ago, not “so that we can make a lot of money” but “because books are important.” They specialize in “books that we are happy to have on the shelves, books that mean something to us” especially photography, politics, Welsh writers (in Welsh or English) and interesting fiction. The shop is just a few doors from the MOMA Machynlleth art gallery with which they have close links, and they write a regular photography feature for the O’r Pedwar Gwynt literary newspaper. I spoke with them shortly after they had re-opened for browsing.

Indies in Scotland

I set out to explore the role of Indies in Scotland, focusing particularly on bookshops that are geographically remote. I was interested in business practices, especially the innovative and the entrepreneurial, as well as the challenges indie bookshops regularly have to face. I also explored the role these bookshops have in their local communities – the kind of extra, add-on qualities that are so difficult to represent on a spreadsheet.

La Librería ¿un comercio esencial?

Lección Inaugural de la Maestría en Estudios Editoriales (tercera cohorte) A cargo de: Jean Yves Mollier Doctor en Literatura Francesa y en Letras y Ciencias Humanas por la Universidad de París I Doctor Honoris Causa por la Universidad de Lausana Profesor...
Back in 1980 Ely had only one bookshop, Bennett’s

First bookstore

My first visit to a bookshop was an occasion which I can still remember, and it set a pattern for a love of books which has lasted all my life. I grew up in Ely, Cambridgeshire, a small cathedral city in...

Working in Bookselling: Interview with Kieron Smith

Kieron Smith is a professional bookseller with over 20 years book trade experience, including WHSmith Retail, establishing the Ottakars.co.uk website in 1999, heading up the web offering at Bertelsmann’s Book Clubs in the UK and operations at Methven’s Booksellers, followed by...

Cultural Interaction Spaces

It is now 90 days since lockdown began in Wales, and I am still wishing I had stopped at my local bookstore on my way home the day before it happened.

This exile from the space of the bookstore has developed my appreciation for the experience offered by that counter-space where commerce and culture agree a tenuous pact of co-existence. This balancing act happens within an identifiable physical location, within borders defined by the walls of the room, the limits of the market stall, or the edges of the book table. Within that defined space, that cultural / commercial balance creates a meaningful location, a normalcy specific to that space–a type of commercial and a cultural identity that may not exist beyond its bounds. Such meaningful locations exist in more than just bookstores, of course. Churches, hospitals, ancient monuments, the local garden centre, the town recycling centre–all of these spaces define a normalcy that dissipates as one moves away from them.