In the summer of 1976, I was in love with another woman. I was also married with two young daughters. Within the next 12 months, I would be divorced and the owner of a small bookstore. 

On Thanksgiving weekend 1976, I browsed the Seattle Times want ads. I must have been really bored because I never read want ads normally. I saw an ad for a Centralia bookstore that was for sale. I called my girlfriend, we checked out the small Crandall’s Books, and agreed that day to buy the business. 

Because of the owner’s growing infirmity, Crandall’s had become, primarily, a paperback book exchange—lots of Harlequin romances, westerns, and mysteries. Not a lot of inventory of what I would call “real books”—literature, history, biographies, natural history. Our goal was to have a store with quality new and used books. We gradually phased out the Harlequins and westerns, advertised that we were buying used books, and began to build a store that featured out-of-print and hard-to-find books, and carefully selected new books of what we considered worthwhile reading. We organized, with the cooperation of Centralia’s Timberland Library, readings by local and Seattle-based authors. Customers began to ask us to find out-of-print books; we searched for—and often located—desired titles.

I remain tremendously grateful to other booksellers who generously shared their knowledge and served as our mentors. Centralia was our training ground as we learned what it means to be a quality used bookstore, to evaluate and price used books even as new books became a growing part of the business. 

This was the mid-1970s. Feminism and a growing number of feminist writers spurred the founding and growth of women-owned and operated presses. These were small businesses started on shoestring budgets by dedicated women willing and eager to get the words of feminist and lesbian philosophers, historians, novelists, poets, and artists into the public sphere. As a bookseller, I wanted to get their books to readers.

The Book Store began stocking titles that included the Boston Women’s Collective’s Our Bodies, Ourselves, Jane Rule’s Desert of the Heart, Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, Adrienne Rich’s On Lies, Secrets, and Silence and Diving into the Wreck. 

At the same time, I continued to learn about bookselling: I attended the University of Denver’s Rare Book School. I subscribed to AB Bookman’s Weekly, the international magazine of the rare book trade, and to Feminist Bookstore News, founded and largely written by Carol Seajay, bookstore owner and tireless promoter of women’s presses and books. AB was my primary tutor for the intricacies of the antiquarian and out-of-print book world, and FBN schooled me in the latest books from the feminist and lesbian presses, especially literary women.

After 18 months in Centralia, my partner and I moved The Book Store to Olympia, occupying a 4^th Avenue space near The Spar (today, a guitar store is in that storefront). We began to specialize in Pacific Northwest history as well as women’s literature. As women’s studies departments were established in colleges and universities, interest grew in women writers who had been ignored and forgotten for decades, if not centuries. It grew to become a new area of bookselling. In the mid-1970s there were only six out-of-print booksellers specializing in feminist books, and I was one of them.

During this time my relationship with my romantic and business partner began to end. I bought her half of the business, immersed myself in the book trade, and focused on realizing my vision of The Book Store as a community center for book lovers—not only to buy books but to have a place to spend some time, browse, meet authors, and discuss books. 

The store had a small upstairs room; it became The Women’s Room, featuring new and used books by and about women with a large selection of titles from the feminist and lesbian presses. And there were a lot of them. I stocked books reviewed and recommended by FBN and written by authors I admired. I sponsored readings in Olympia by those women, including Barbara Wilson (now Barbara Sjoholm), a founder of Seattle’s Seal Press and author of Walking on the Moon, Murder in the Collective and many other titles. Also Jane Rule, Joanna Russ, poets Rebecca Brown and Judith Barrington, artist Tee Corinne. These writers, and others, including poets Linda Bierds and Pat Parker, were interviewed on the KAOS radio show, Alternate Route by Janet Benke, the self-proclaimed “Voice of Lesbian Radio.”

An increasing number of women came into the store, went upstairs, then, rather furtively, came to the desk to purchase books. Some I knew were state employees who very realistically feared it was a threat to their jobs to be outed as queer. No doubt that fear also inhibited their attendance at lesbian author appearances.

One such event made a front-page headline in The Olympian: “Author of ‘Lesbian Nuns’ Stops in Olympia.” Former nuns Rosemary Curb and Nancy Manahan solicited stories from active and former nuns by advertising in women’s and lesbian publications. They received more than 300 responses. Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence became a bestseller, but it was not without controversy; an author appearance in Boston was canceled following objections from the Catholic church. My only concern about the Olympia appearance was that my parents at Panorama would see my photo with the lesbian nun in The Olympian and have to explain it to their neighbors.

As I developed my inventory of used and out-of-print books by and about women, I exhibited and presented workshops at National Women’s Studies Association conferences and at the Women in Print Conference in Seattle. During a National Women’s Studies conference in Champaign-Urbana, I had a long conversation with Barbara Grier, the founder of Naiad, the largest lesbian press in the world and publisher of Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence, as well as books that were what I considered to be the lesbian equivalent of Harlequin romances. Barbara defended the choice of books Naiad issued, saying that lesbians deserved to read books that portrayed lives like theirs in a positive way and ended happily. I argued that I would like to see books that reflected higher literary quality. Barbara called me a snob, and left the room. Our relationship remained cool from then on.

In The Book Store, I continued to stock Naiad Press titles, especially those by Jane Rule, but I focused on books by lesbian writers that I felt had greater literary merit: the Australian writer, Dale Spender, whose books were published by Pandora Press in London; Rita Mae Brown, whose first books were published by Daughters; poetry by Pat Parker, published by Firebrand Books; and Judith Barrington, published by Eighth Mountain Press. As these writers gained recognition, they moved to larger mainstream presses, but I like to think I had a role, along with women’s bookstores across the country, in helping these women’s presses find outlets and readers for their books.

The Book Store became a place in Olympia where, I believe, lesbians could, for a few minutes, feel safe and feel affirmed. I hosted a lesbian book group at the store that brought women together to discuss characters and plots in particular titles. The group, promoted by word of mouth, never had more than five or six members, but it was one more place where, like the Lesbian Fun Club organized by Radiance owner Carolyn McIntyre, women could get together, socialize and share stories. In 1986, I closed The Book Store. I had accepted an offer from AB Bookman’s Weekly to become its executive editor, and I moved to New Jersey to begin a new job. By then, gay and lesbian books were featured prominently at independent and chain bookstores. They had come out of the closet.