One of the few reliable pleasures left on social media these days is the Instagram account for Nashville’s Parnassus Books, where, every Friday, owner Ann Patchett posts her recommendations with the catchphrase “If you haven’t read this book, it’s new to you.” As a fiction writer, Patchett has been nominated for and won numerous prizes, including the PEN/Faulkner Award. But could someone please create an award for handselling? Because this woman belongs in the Hall of Fame. Her Friday reels have inspired so many impulse purchases, from Halldór Laxness’s Independent People to Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, that I hold Patchett accountable for the precarious TBR piles colonizing my nightstand.
Once, great authors were unapproachable figures lodged on Mount Olympus, descending only to publish book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and such high-toned outlets. Think of Joan Didion’s oracular essays in the New York Review of Books or John Updike’s reviews in the New Yorker, required reading that could nevertheless be condescending or spectacularly wrongheaded. (I’ve never gotten over Updike’s 1999 critique of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Spell as—eye roll—“relentlessly gay.”) We might have studied and scrutinized these missives from distant constellations, but the conversation was distinctly one-sided.
Today some authors, like Patchett, practice a different kind of literary citizenship. Without any diminishment in output or quality of their writing (Patchett’s glorious Whistler is coming from Harper in June), they open and manage really good independent bookstores and proselytize—with intelligence and persuasiveness—for the books they love on social media. Another of this new breed is Lauren Groff. Nominated multiple times for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kirkus Prize, she’s also the co-owner, with husband Clay Kallman, of The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida, which opened in 2024 with the mission of uplifting works by BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers. Running a bookstore hasn’t slowed down Groff one bit. Our starred review says of her new book, Brawler (Riverhead, Feb. 24), “This audacious [story]collection surprises readers with the vivid lives few of us notice.”
Which brings us to Emma Straub, who graces the cover of our April 1 issue in a portrait by illustrator Jessine Hein. Straub was already the successful author of novels such as The Vacationers and Modern Lovers when she and her husband, Michael Fusco-Straub, opened Books Are Magic in Brooklyn in 2017. The mural on the shop’s Butler Street wall was soon an instantly recognizable backdrop for social media selfies; discerning readers from the borough and beyond flock there for the well-curated shelves and marquee author events. Contributor Kim Hubbard met Straub there on a recent morning to talk about her new novel, American Fantasy, out from Riverhead on April 7. (“A delightfully nostalgic novel about how the things we loved in the past have the power to shape our future,” says our starred review.) Readers love Straub’s books, and they trust her book recommendations, reflected on the store’s shelves and in frequent appearances on the Today show. Read the interview and just try to resist the infectious literary enthusiasm of this self-described “human exclamation point.”
Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.
