Staunton Books & Tea

The Secret Life of Books, the wall exhibition which we just wrapped up, traced the journey a book takes: from the writer who first shapes an idea into language, through the work of editors and publishers, onto our shelves, and into your hands. Alongside the display, we asked everyone who stopped by two questions. What came back, in dozens of handwriting styles, was less a survey than a small collective portrait of why this place, and places like it, matter. What Our Community Told Us On the...

It starts with a parade Julia Sabin, the proprietor of Staunton Books & Tea, grew up in the Soviet Union, where May Day, International Workers' Day, was one of the year's great collective performances. Factories, schools, state organizations of every kind: everyone marched. There were banners and flowers, brass bands and slogans. The worker was the hero of the state. Labor was not something you endured — it was something you celebrated, publicly, with your neighbors, in the street. The first...

A note from Julia, on our March curated exhibition wall. Join us on March 18th for the first-ever Staunton Reading Society , a conversation-based gathering where we will discuss books about women who shaped history. I grew up in a society that had women's rights designed into its foundations. Not as a movement, not as a conversation, not as something women had to fight for in the streets. It was written into the constitution. The Soviet Union was, in many ways, a pioneer of formal gender...