Staunton Books & Tea

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...

On November 16, 2025, we gather for a thoughtful exploration of one of the year’s most complex subjects: immigration. Rather than debate, this evening invites curiosity, empathy, and clarity as our panelists share their lived experiences, historical contexts, and human stories. We are honored to welcome a distinguished group of voices: Seth Michelson , poet and professor at Washington and Lee University, whose decades of work in immigration spaces inform his latest book, Hope on the Border ....