Anika Horn

Before my 40th birthday, I set out to visit 40 independent bookshops. I ended up visiting 54 across two continents, four countries, and 18 cities. Along the way, I learned that great bookshops are not defined by square footage, bestseller tables, or even coffee quality (though they all help create a great experience!). They are shaped by curation, community, and an enormous amount of invisible labor that most customers never see. This is what a year inside indie bookshops taught me. How it...

(This blog post was written by the co-host of this month's international book club, Ali Hosseini). Shahrnush Parsipour is an Iranian writer now living in the US. When Women Without Men was written in 1977, no publisher was willing to publish it. After her novel, Touba and the Mining of the Night , was well received, Women Without Men was published in 1989. Before pressure groups and security agents could ban it, the book sold out and became unavailable. Shortly afterward, the author was...

Across the country, theater organizations are navigating a difficult moment. Arts funding is shrinking. Production costs are rising. Audience habits are shifting. Many companies are still recovering from the pandemic's long tail while being asked to do more with less. These conversations often stay at a national level. What’s harder to see is how those trends show up in real places, in rehearsal rooms, classrooms, and small towns like Staunton. And yet, Staunton offers a powerful case for why...