This is the best books news I’ve heard since Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman bought The Rumpus: Charlie’s Queer Books is opening a new location in Seattle’s original gayborhood, Capitol Hill. Next door to Unicorn Bar, across the street from Wildrose, and around the corner from Elliott Bay Book Company, this new space is set to open in November.
The new store will be ADA accessible and twice as big as the Fremont location, with an events and gathering space with room for 50 seats, as well as a coffee shop and wine bar. I spoke with the owners, Charlie Hunts and Madeline Burchard, about how it all came to be.
How did you get to a place where you could open a second location?
Hunts: It has been remarkable how the Seattle queer and literary community have rallied around us. At this point, we’ve run out of space. Not only on the shelves, but also in terms of what this [current] location can handle for events and as a gathering space.
The property managers of this new location are an older couple from 12th & Pike St. Associates. They understand not only what we’re doing, but why it’s important for the neighborhood. If you keep the rent at a manageable price, even if it’s still high, you can keep the businesses that make the neighborhood what it is and encourage the vitality of that space.
How important are exclusively queer bookstores these days?
Burchard: Because we’re in a cross section of record book bans and anti-LGBT legislation, our bookstore holds more responsibility than the average small business. That is in the forefront of our minds every single day we open the door. It’s been touching, the way people look to us to be leaders in the community, especially when something happens that affects the community.
Do you feel ready and able for that responsibility?
Burchard: Charlie and I have training for it, but it’s heavy to be like, “Okay, we gotta say the responsible thing. I hope we’re getting this right.” We won’t always, but I hope we can show up for people in the best way. Sometimes it’s tough for me to figure out our next step—what we say, what we do, or if people even want to hear from us about it. But we have a lot of young trans customers who look up to Charlie in particular. So Charlie’s is more than a third space. This is part of our social fabric.
Hunts: We also do things like watch parties and video nights. Events that are kind of stupid, silly, but essential. That’s one of our niches—to not take ourselves too seriously, to be joyful, and in touch with culture, too. We’re not just people who own a bookstore selling to gay people. We are gay people.
Do you have a vision or hopes and dreams for where this is all headed, say five years from now?
Hunts: We’ve had big hand-wavy dreams, like what if this became a national thing? But it’s very hypothetical. Right now, we’re entering a new industry in coffee and food service. We’re getting a handle on that, and what’s great about this place is it allows us to support programming that doesn’t charge for tickets. So everything from a silent book club to open mic, it helps support community events and bigger authors, too.
I think our vision for the store is people come in here and they’re kind of entering into an alternate universe where they are the norm. They are the defaults. They’re not hunting the shelves for things that wreck them. They’re not in the LGBT section that’s tucked away.
Like the porn section or something.
Hunts: Yes, we are always next to self-help. We have encountered bookstores where the LGBT section is next to porn, self-help. Sometimes in… a literal closet. A little closet that just didn’t have a door on it. We were like, we have to make this bookstore.
Is there anything you want to say to people about the new space?
Hunts: I’m excited to keep iterating on this business, see how far we can take it, and learn as much as we can. We’re very open. Folks who came in and said, “I want to start a book club”: we let them start a book club. If folks have dreams for something, they don’t always have a space for it. We are open to these conversations. If someone is serious, they want to take charge of it, work with us, and collaborate, let’s talk about it.
