Gone Booksellin'

Porch Light Books opens this Saturday

You may have noticed I haven’t written a single newsletter in 2024, despite promising a monthly round-up of reading, writing, and general goings-on. That’s—as of this writing—ten neglectful months in a row.

What was I doing in all that time that was so important?

Opening a bookstore, that’s what!

It’s called Porch Light Books, and you can find it on the southeast corner of 99 Street and 89 Avenue in Edmonton.

Porch Light carries a mixture of used, new, and rare titles in a bright and welcoming storefront with floor-to-ceiling windows and the best coffee in the city right across the street.

We managed to open our doors for a “soft opening” last Saturday morning, and I was promptly run off my feet the entire weekend. The community here in Mill Creek/Old Strathcona is something special, and I’m so excited to be part of it.

That does mean, unfortunately, that this newsletter is going on permanent hiatus. I won’t have much time to write for the foreseeable future, and the whole idea of buying and collecting books feels different when you have 10,000 titles at your fingertips at all times. (Weirdly, I feel less compelled to add to my personal collection now that I have the Porch Light shelves to defer to.)

So for one last time, here are a few final updates on the other projects I’ve been working on:

• The 2024 Short Story Advent Calendar—featuring stories by Jennifer Croft Carmen Maria Machado, Ed Park, Casey Plett, Robin Sloan, and more—is on sale now! (We have plenty of copies at Porch Light.)

• This year H&O also published two new entries to our Permanent Record longform series: Michelle Cyca’s The Curious Case of Gina Adams and Jeremy Klazsus’s The Hollowing of the Calgary Herald. Both are excellent, obviously.

• I was fortunate enough to co-write a memoir with Scott Oake, longtime host at Hockey Night in Canada. It’s called For the Love of a Son, and it tells the story of Scott’s son Bruce, who died of an accidental drug overdose, and the entire Oake family’s journey to build a state-of-the-art treatment centre in Winnipeg. The book goes on sale in January 2025.

From here on in, though, it’s going to be pretty much all Porch Light, all the time. If you’re in the Edmonton area, I hope you’ll join us for our grand opening this Saturday, November 9 at 10 a.m. We’ll have raffles, giveaways, free doughnuts, and the first 20 people in line will get a free coffee coupon from our neighbours at the Colombian.

OK, that’s it! See ya!