'They each require parts of you, each day, forever': Jeannine A Cook on life as an author-bookseller
Pursuing two or more professions in parallel can be complicated, but author-bookseller Jeannine A Cook, originally from Philadelphia in the US and now based in Paris, France, prefers to focus on what works and ignore what does not.
“Neither is a craft with a finite ending point,” she says. “They each require parts of you, each day, forever. I find their deep rootedness the most interesting. You’re never done speaking about, thinking about, promoting your book,” she adds. “You’re never done providing community space, hosting, running your bookshop. They are like a two-trunk tree, they just keep growing and growing and, if you are lucky, they will both outlive you.”
Cook’s career as a bricks-and-mortar bookseller began in February 2020 when she founded the Black Harriett’s Bookshop in the white, working-class Fishtown district of north Philadelphia. This was followed by Ida’s Bookshop in Collingswood, New Jersey in August 2021, and since 2023 Josephine’s, a temporary performance-based installation staged twice at the American University in Paris and once at the Galerie Au Médicis in the Latin Quarter. She also held Josephine literary salons in three private French homes.
The fact that Covid-19 arrived at the beginning of all this was no deterrent to Cook. During lockdowns, she instead took books into the street, attracting a solid customer base that followed her inside when the pandemic was over.
While she has been a bookseller for a while now, her career as an author began last year, when she signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins. It’s Me They Follow (Amistad) was published in the US in September and Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett’s Bookshop (Amistad) will be released next March.
Cook draws some of her inspiration from Sylvia Beach, a friend of George Whitman, who founded the legendary Shakespeare and Company store in Paris. “In the way that Beach provides a pathway for me, I hope I will do the same for others.”
Life as an author and a bookseller “builds empathy and compassion”, Cook says. With an equally high level of respect for the two sides of the book world, she has been able to undertake advocacy for shops and books themselves. “Especially recently, I have strived to help ban the book bans [in the US], and now as an author, in a way I can actually extend the reach.”
Part of her “extended reach” includes addressing international conferences, stressing the importance of bookshops in her books, and a live Instagram debate with Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania.
Other initiatives include a Ban the Books Ban tote bag campaign and distribution of Freedom to Read postcards encouraging the public to ask their state representatives for protection in the Philly Bookstore Crawl Day last August.
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Cook says her bookshops have produced “tonnes of stories to consider”. “Customers tell me stories every day, and the books we stock give me a whole other universe of ideas to explore. We have new, used and rare titles, which are each a world within a world,” she says. She is “thankful to be surrounded by so many characters and inspiration. With each story comes a new depth of empathy – new shoes to walk in, and different perspectives, worldviews, insights and outlooks. It is all very grounding”.
But Cook says her author-bookseller combination is rare. Until recently, she knew of only five such people in the US – all of them women, and all except her, white. “They are Judy Blume – another pathway for me – Ann Patchett, Zibby Owens and Emma Straub,” she said in an interview. “They are all icons in the literary world.”
At the beginning of October, she met author Maura Cheeks, who founded Liz’s Book Bar in Brooklyn last year, and recently read about Sharmaine Lovegrove, a Berlin-based bookseller and former literary agent and former head of Dialogue at Hachette UK. “What a unique perspective she must be able to offer to her teams on all fronts,” says Cook.
Lovegrove recently joined Mulcahy Sweeney Associates, still in Berlin, and will open Chapters, an English-language bookshop in the German capital in November. She also remains cultural strategist at Hachette UK until next July.
Next up for Cook is Wangari’s Bookshop installation at the River Café in Nairobi’s Karura Forest at an undefined date. There are “many, many more shops, women to honour and books in my head”, says Cook. But she restrains herself in the spirit of the Swahili expression pole pole, which means pace yourself or go slowly slowly.
