Celebrating the vital role of bookshops in local communities
In our busy, noisy, ever-accelerating modern world, bookshops are a bit of a haven, a place of sanctuary where it’s possible to slow down, reflect and feed the imagination – there is nothing like browsing through piles of books, anticipating your next read.
In recognition of the importance of these spaces of literary connection and inspiration, the Booksellers Association launched an annual celebration of bookshops in 2016, highlighting the significant cultural, economic and community value that they bring to high streets and wider society. This year’s Bookshop Day takes place on Saturday with booksellers, publishers, authors, illustrators and poets all working together on the campaign to encourage people around the country to embrace the joy of reading and to support their local bookshops.
“They say that the person who doesn’t read lives only one life, while the reader lives a thousand lives during their time on earth,” says poet and academic Emily Zobel Marshall, professor of postcolonial literature at Leeds Beckett University, who is one of four Bookshop Day ambassadors this year alongside actor Hugh Bonneville, children’s author Claire Fayers and poet and literacy advocate Simon Lamb. “Books and reading are conduits to empathy – they allow us to walk in the shoes of others and remind us of our shared humanity. We live in this fast-paced digital world with information coming to us from various places very quickly. Bookshops first of all are places to find calm and really unwind away from all of that. You can stay as long as you like and there is a real sense of community in a bookshop – a literary eco-system is upheld there, through book launches, author talks and reading groups, and people come to trust their local bookshop and bookseller for recommendations.”
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A recent report from the Booksellers Association, The Cultural Role and Value of England's Independent Bookshops, commissioned by Arts Council England, revealed the vital role that bookshops play in fostering community cohesion. It found that 92 percent of bookshops run activities and events for their local communities, 63 percent support local literary and arts festivals and 56 percent run events in partnership with local arts and community organisations. They also help to inspire young people, with 45 percent facilitating author visits to schools, and they encourage people’s own creativity – 40 percent organize creative writing workshops.
An encouraging sign for bookshops has been that in recent years there has been a trend away from digital books with people increasingly returning to physical books and the printed page. “It is interesting,” says Zobel Marshall. “I thought that all my students would end up reading the books on the reading list I give them digitally, but apart from a few who might use their laptop or a digital reader, the majority buy physical copies of the books. I think you have a relationship with a book as an object – maybe it has been signed by the author or you think of the people you have lent it to and you can pass it on.”
Bookshop Day also coincides with the publication this month of Zobel Marshall’s second collection of poetry Other Wild, published by Leeds-based Peepal Tree Press, the world's leading publisher of Caribbean and Black British writing who also published her first collection Bath of Herbs in 2023. “In my first book I explored different landscapes in Yorkshire and the Caribbean and in North Wales where I grew up with a Black Caribbean mum and a white English dad. Other Wild is an extension to that, looking at wild women, and creatures, who refuse to stick to official paths, from a mixed heritage position and as a woman. It is about our relationship with the natural world. I am a keen wild swimmer so there are a lot of poems in honour of rivers and our relationship to water.” Other Wild has been described by nature writer and poet Robert Macfarlane as ‘a glorious, various collection: embedded and embodied in the living world, zinging throughout with love, joy, passion, loss and profusion’.
Zobel Marshall will be launching Other Wild at the weekend with an event at Leeds Waterstones. “I’m looking forward to it,” she says. “As well as celebrating bookshops, we will also be marking the 40th anniversary of the wonderful Peepal Tree Press, who have been championing Caribbean literature for decades operating out of a little back-to-back in Leeds.”
Bookshop Day 2025 takes place on October 11. Emily Zobel Marshall’s new poetry collection Other Wild is published by Peepal Tree Press; it will be launched at Waterstones, Leeds on October 11 at 7pm. Details and tickets waterstones.com/events/emily-zobel-marshall-bookshop-day-ambassador-poetry-launch/leeds