Q&A with Firestorm Books
Originally published in Nectar’s newsletter on May 7th, 2021.
Our indie bookstore highlight for May is Firestorm Books in Asheville, NC, which also happens to be our colleague Alyson Sinclair’s new home city and favorite local indie! Read on for a Q&A with booksellers Esmé, Libertie, and Ash.
Tell us about Firestorm Books:
Firestorm is a 13 year-old queer-owned co-op operating on Cherokee land in Southern Appalachia. We curate a unique selection of books related to feminism, politics, and social movements, as well as more general interest titles related to gardening, herbalism, kids’ books, and more!
We’re always impressed by Firestorm’s values as a worked-owned collective and how you support the community. Can you tell us more about your business model? Do you have advice for other bookstore who want to open as or transition to worker-owned?
Our collective is currently comprised of four worker-owners. We do not have managers or bosses and we make all decisions collectively through consensus. We are committed to a not-for-profit model, meaning that any money we bring in that goes above our overhead and equitably compensating our labor is used to support the work of local grassroots organizations.
We would would recommend that any bookstore interested in exploring a co-op model join the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives! They can also connect with other co-ops in their community that may be in a different area of work, as well as co-operative bookstores across the country such as Red Emma’s in Baltimore, Pilsen Community Books in Chicago, and Bluestockings Cooperativein NYC.
Has the way you think about books and the industry changed over the past year?
The elimination of in-person events and coffee service over the past year due to the pandemic has narrowed the focus of our work even more tightly around books. A major growth area has been learning how to connect our audience to the books they’ll love without in-store browsing or the ability to hand-sell (we have been curbside pickup only since March 2020). This has lead to some creative social media experiments such as video book reviews. We even have collective members giving book recommendations on TikTok (@firestormcoop)!
We have found that the events that have translated best to a virtual format are also those centered on books, such as book clubs and author talks. One unexpected benefit has been the ability to virtually host some incredible authors who don’t often make it to Southern Appalachia on their book circuits, as well as having event participants joining in from across the country. The Radical Publishers Alliance was also created within the past year, and we have been able to collaborate with them on virtual events for their Radical May series, such as upcoming author talks with Gabriel Kuhn and Eric Laursen.
Besides buying books from Firestorm, how can folks support you and the larger community of Asheville?
We are long-term partners with local prisoner solidarity organizations Asheville Prison Books and Tranzmission Prison Project, who collect and send books to incarcerated folks. As an explicitly abolitionist collective, it has been amazing for us to see the prison abolition movement pick up steam in the mainstream consciousness over the past year. If you’re outside of Asheville and looking to help, there are similar organizations all over the country who need volunteers to package books and send words of encouragement to people living behind bars. Find out if there’s a prison books organization in your area through this database!
What are you reading right now?
Esmé: She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Libertie: The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State by Eric Laursen and Maia Ramnath
Ash: Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff VanderMeer
What’s your favorite book to handsell?
We couldn't narrow it down to one so we chose a fiction and non-fiction title each!
Esmé:
Fiction: Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda
Non-Fiction: Prison by Any Other Name by Victoria Law and Maya Schenwar
Libertie:
Fiction: Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom
Non-Fiction: Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Ash:
Fiction: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Non-Fiction: What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte
What’s a bestseller at Firestorm that people outside of your community might not know about?
Dixie Be Damned by Neal Shirley and Saralee Stafford tells the stories of lesser known insurrections in the American South, including attacks on plantations by enslaved peoples, mill strikes, and prison riots. The book calls attention to the rich history of radical liberation seekers in a part of the country that is often painted with a broad brush as backward and stagnant.