Meet Me In The Bookstore: The St. Louis Literary Underground

I moved to St. Louis from Ft. Wayne, Indiana when I was eight years old. Well, technically that’s not true. I moved across the river from St. Louis, to a small Southern Illinois town, but we metro-area dwellers are like Chicago suburbanites – it’s much easier to say we’re from the city than face the constant perplexed expressions we get when we say the actual names of our tiny towns. But for all intents and purposes, I considered St. Louis home.  We crossed the river weekly – for shopping, baseball games, the zoo, dinner, lower gas prices. The list goes on. So had anyone asked, “Do you know St. Louis well?” I would’ve said, “Of course. Absolutely. I’m there all the time.”

When I moved into the city last summer, though, I realized that for most of my life, I was nothing more than a glorified tourist. I knew the area around Busch Stadium like the back of my hand, sure, and I’d been in the Arch more times than strictly necessary. But there were many things about St. Louis culture I had yet to learn. I learned that, if you haven’t gotten your car broken into, you haven’t been properly welcomed into the city. I learned how to drive 70 like a native. I learned where the good Thai restaurants are, and which ones to avoid.  

I learned that St. Louis gets a lot of bad press. Much of it's warranted. Some of it's a little harsh. But I also learned something about St. Louis that surprised me: it has an extremely active literary community. When I started working at Left Bank, I was shocked at the amount of author events the store held each month. Even now, I’m continually impressed with the status and variety of authors welcomed by Left Bank to the city. A sneak peak at what’s upcoming: David Sedaris. Alison Bechdel. Vanessa Williams. John Smoltz. Buzz Bissinger. There’s something for everyone.

But what most impressed me about the St. Louis literary scene was how willing the supposedly competing indie bookstores were to work together to keep the scene not only alive, but thriving. About a year ago, my boss at Left Bank banded together with the owners of many of St. Louis’ other bookstores – Subterranean, Pudd’nhead, Dunaway, etc. – to create the St. Louis Independent Bookstore Alliance. I’ll let the alliance speak for itself:

The mission of the [...] Alliance is to provide St. Louis with a wide variety of independent bookstores, each specializing in their own passion for books, staffed by expert booksellers and stocked with the most amazing books; to support the creative and literary efforts in our city; to share our love of knowledge and storytelling; to not only keep up with the times, but to stay ahead of the curve so that our customers get the best service, the best events, and books that fill their souls. It advocates in a variety of ways on issues that affect independent bookstores.

Their website links you to blogs, reviews, maps, e-books, and a giant St. Louis literary calendar that combines events from all the area’s bookstores into one accessible location. They organized a ridiculously cool flash mob for World Book Night. These bookstores aren’t simply concerned about keeping their heads above water; instead, they’re taking it upon themselves to keep indie bookstores a vibrant and vital part of the community. This excellent article from The Riverfront Times sums it up perfectly. In the words of Abed Nadir, “Cool. Cool, cool, cool.”

The bookstores aren’t the only ones contributing to St. Louis literary culture, though. There’s the Regional Arts Commission, whose Arts Zipper calendar links you to a plethora of literary events happening all over the city. There are new presses popping up all over the place, produing creative and beautiful work – a friend of mine is doing some awesome things with poetry as editor of Architrave Press. And UMSL’s own Graduate Writers Association (of which I’m the secretary – “like” us on Facebook!) brings in multiple exciting fiction writers and poets each semester, and always for free. This weekend, we’re bring fantastic up-and-coming fiction writer Caitlin Horrocks into town. I’ve just started reading her prize-winning collection, This Is Not Your City, and it’s pretty spectacular.

And that’s not the half of it. There are always exciting things going on in the St. Louis literary community, if you know where to look. We’re not Portland, but we don’t need to be. As the Indie Bookstore Alliance’s motto goes, “We are the literary underground, my friend.” We think small, but we’re growing. We are becoming more visible by the moment. We are overlooked. We are dismissed. But we’re here. And we’re not going anywhere.