By: Holly Smith
Many adult readers remember, with a good dose of nostalgia, the excitement and awe they felt at the annual Scholastic Book Fair. Books were trundled into the school and displayed, ready to be browsed. While some of this spirit is recaptured while going to a bookstore, there was something unique about the feel of the book fair.
Courtney Bledsoe, owner of Call & Response Books (1390 E. Hyde Park Blvd.), wanted “to channel as adults the kind of energy and spirit we had for the Scholastic Book Fair as kids.” So, even before her brick-and-mortar storefront opened in May of 2024, she started the Grown Up Book Fair.
“My idea was to have a grown-up book fair where books were displayed all over the place and people could mill around, browse books, chat with their friends, and ideally have it in kind of a café setting where they had access to beverages and things like that.”
With that in mind, Bledsoe reached out to Gigi and Erin Hoang at the Uptown staple First Sip Café (1057 W. Argyle St.). “They are really fantastic and so fun,” Bledsoe shared. Additionally, Bledsoe said she “thought it’d be great to work with another woman of color owned business.”
“Usually the books I bring are a reflection of the current curation of what we have at the store. Our store is focused on uplifting books by people of color—people of the global majority as I like to say. But we have books from all genres and all age groups.” She continued, “Generally, since this is a grown-up book fair, we bring adult titles, but we bring young adult titles as well. But it is truly all genres. We bring books that are fiction, nonfiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, cookbooks, poetry, like literally everything.”
Bledsoe learned that people who attended the two previous Grown Up Book Fairs (as well as visitors to her store) have often discovered new authors and titles there that excite them.
“Because of the nature of publishing, a lot of the books we sell are not necessarily New York Times bestsellers because they tend to get overlooked. And so, something that people really enjoy seeing at the Grown Up Book Fair are titles that they haven’t been exposed to that are a little bit off the beaten path that they wouldn’t have noticed before, but are excited to see now.” Bledsoe adds, “It’s really been fun to see people learning about new authors.”
Bledsoe hopes the book fair brings more visibility to Call & Response Books and First Sip Café, and that attendees will discover an author or title there they weren’t previously familiar with.
“My whole goal with this space as well is to kind of shift the narrative about what stories are worth engaging with because these stories that we’re engaging with here and uplifting here are just as worth engaging with as other ones that have been more in the limelight recently.”
“I think that, unfortunately, we’re still in a time period where a lot of the books authored by people of color are pushed to the margins, either through a publishing industry perspective or in the popular discourse. And so, what I also wanted to do was also say these are books that are doing some really cool things either from a genre perspective like they’re bending the kind of contours of genre or they’re doing really cool things with respect to presenting new perspectives that people have not been familiar with.”
Call & Response Books’s third Grown Up Book Fair is this Friday, January 17th from 7pm to 9pm at First Sip Café located at 1057 W Argyle St with no RSVP required.
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