On a Tuesday evening, as rush hour began to die down, Solid State Books opened its doors for the community to gather around a live poetry reading and conversation about fatherhood. Their H Street location, home to a coffee shop serving up canned cold brew and glasses of rosé, was warmly lit and sprawling with shelves of New York Times Best Sellers, carefully categorized with large orange markers. Towards the back end of the bookstore in front of the colorful children’s section, P. Scott Cunningham and Clint Smith led a poetry reading.
As people began to fill the room, the warmth of a 96-degree day in Washington was transformed by the atmosphere inside. No humidity or smell of lingering garbage. No musty metro elevator stench or the thick Washington air that makes your palms sticky and your clothes cling to your body. The warmth that filled Solid State Books embraced visitors with an uplifting scent of freshly ground espresso beans. And the delightful aroma of pages unturned.
Among novel covers displayed as posters on the tops of shelves, a poster read “don’t let indie bookstores become a work of fiction.”
Indie is a term used to describe independent bookstores in cities all over the country. Marie McGrath is the events lead at Solid State Books. She was enthused to welcome a few dozen community members to the store that evening, bouncing around from guest to guest while checking last minute customers out.
Bookstore events, while they are Marie’s job, have helped her to find community and help others in doing so as well. “It’s a really good way to meet people. It’s not easy to make new friends, and I know that D.C. is such a city that always has influxes of new people. So, I think going to book events is a great way to be in community with people you might not otherwise meet,” Marie said while grinning ear to ear.
Independent bookstores like Solid State are not just places to uncover a new story. They are avenues for bringing community members together in her experience. “There are more than 30 in the DMV, and we feel extremely lucky to count ourselves among them. It’s such a mutually supportive environment.” In a city like Washington where days can feel so fast paced, Marie finds local bookstores to be a third space where people can just relax. “Having the space to slow down, having a place where you can browse in person. Just wander, look at things, pick things up, put them down, choose to take them home or not. It’s sort of a dying art form in general.”
In between poems read aloud from Cunningham’s new book Self Portrait, The I in Florida, attendees were enthralled with the words coming off the page; almost like attending a play. Cunningham’s work dissects his time living in Miami – a city close to his heart – and makes assertations about his experience as a father.
Following the poetry reading, Smith and Cunningham sat down to talk about fatherhood, their creative processes, and touched on how AI is reshaping writing. Smith spoke with me after the event about the importance of in-person events. “There’s something about the physical aspect of sitting next to one another, exchanging ideas, hearing people talk about ideas in ways that is refreshing. It’s like a small miracle that people continue to come out to events like this. We live in a moment where you could watch any movie that’s ever been made, any TV show that’s ever been made. There is an endless amount of content to distract us.”
Aside from the distractions of a digitized world, local bookshop events give people the chance to unplug, unwind, and re-human.
Featured image/photo courtesy of StockCake.
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