A Collection of Stories and Poems

Reading and Book Signing

With Authors and Artists

Sunday, July 28, 2019

4 pm

Free will donations gratefully accepted at the door

Refreshments will be served and books will be for sale during the event.

Books are also for sale directly from the publisher or from the eponymous bookshop, Classics Books at 4 West Lafayette Street in Trenton.

Area writers will be reading selections from The Bookshop on Lafayette Street, a collection of stories and poems inspired by Trenton’s own Classics Books, published by Ragged Sky Press.  Everything to love about bookstores is in the collection: the sense of wonder and discovery, the cozy clutter, idiosyncratic book lovers, the feeling of being in a magic haven buttressed against the cruelties of the world, and, of course, the adventure of books themselves.

Contributors include Ilene Dube, Jeff Edelstein, Barry Gross, John Gummere, Yusef Komunyakaa, Doc Long, Eric Maywar, Leon Rainbow, Jackie Reinstedler, Nancy Scott, Thomas Webster, and David Lee White.

This collection is for readers who long to open a hidden passageway when they pull a book from the shelf or secretly hope the bookseller will lock them in the bookstore overnight. There is a story about the five greatest bookstores of all time, another about a woman who brings her date to a bookshop to see how he handles himself around books, and another about the ghosts of books burnt in book burnings.  There is a play about the most annoying customer in the world, a story about the bookseller and the troll, and a story about a boy who rode on the tops of trains and what that meant.