Bookish Atlanta

Celebrate Audiobook Month with us 🎉

We’re hosting an Audiobook Meetup in celebration of Audiobook Month! Join us on June 2nd at 6:30 as we walk from Bookish to Side Saddle on the Beltline for snacks, bevvies, and community!

The first 10 attendees will receive a free audiobook credit!

Mama’s Day is this Sunday, and we know alltoowell that this day will@stir mixed feelings for many. Kendra & I first met right before Mother’s Day in 2023, as my “Annual How To Honor My Mom and Myself Simultaneously” anxiety was approaching a rolling boil. 🥵

As I tenderly shared my complicated maternal relationship with Kendra, she assured me that I was in good company. Over the years, Bookish has become a beacon for people whose formative years were less than fairytale for a variety of reasons. 🏰 This bookshop holds space for a lot of messiness, and goodness knows how nuanced mother/daughter relationships can be.

For those who celebrate the nurturers in life this weekend, Bookish has a selection of sweet gifts for the women folk in your life.

📚 Memoirs, journals, & poetry books
🪞 Mirror decals
👕 Tees & totes created here in ATL
🔑 Wooden key rings
🧦 Bright socks
🌞 Colorful sun catchers
🖼️ Letterpress art prints
☕️ Coffee mugs
👌🏽 Small batch candles, refrigerator magnets for plant lovers, and Mother’s Day cards from regional artists, too.

We always tuck your purchase into bags suitable for giving- each one handscreened by our Simon. Ask for some tisssue and a free gift tag at checkout- one less thing on your plate! 😌

Grateful for feminine energy and the long line of nurturers who taught us how to take good care of poeple. We’re sending good energy and hoping for some time in nature this weekend for you! 🌲🥾❤️

I started my collection of chosen family, my strawberry people*, when I was 19 years old. I was at Florida State absolutely looking to fall in love. Just not with a girl. But there she was. She was everything I was not: an excellent friend. Confident. Thoughtful. She wanted to know so many things about me–and for the first time in my life, I wasn’t scared to tell her. I literally told her allthethings. And she loved me anyway. She broke through the deep shame I carried (I was raised evangelical—its part and parcel of what that brand of religion offers) and made me feel loveable, redeemable. She healed me in so many ways. I wouldn’t be me without having known and loved her.

Betsy and I broke up my first year in grad school. It was messy. We were messy. I was extra messy. And (even though we should have left each other alone for a bit) we remained best friends through it all. Through the arguments. The making up. The genuinely terrible decisions people make in their early twenties. Then, in our thirties, we were bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. She flew into town after my first miscarrage–just to be by my side. We got the tremendous gift of welcoming each other’s babies into the world. There has not been a day where I have really questioned whether or not she loves me. She is my family. And the person I go to when I need steady, calm reassurance. And she does a really great impression of a dog sneezing. Which is not nothing.

I was 28 when I picked my next person for the long haul. We met each other and, again in true le***an fashion, have rarely been apart since then. We drank too much Miller Lite together. We tried to turn over new leaves and drink less together. Got married. Got sober together. Had a kid. He transitioned. I spun out a little bit. We moved to Atlanta. We broke up. Got back together. Opened our marriage. And, ultimately, split up.

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But they still have coffee together every morning. How in the hell does that happen? And why? Read more at Kendra’s Substack. ➡️ The link is in our bio!