Tag Archives: books

Charlie’s Queer Books is expanding to Capitol Hill with a new shop and cafe on E Pike

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A recent Charlie’s author event (Image: @grandmajoysroadtrip)

(Image: Charlie’s Queer Books)

A scene from the 2025 fire

A neighborhood tragedy that left a valued Pike/Pine business space critically damaged is giving way to a happy new story.

Charlie’s Queer Books will open a second location on Capitol Hill this November, expanding to E Pike to join a community of businesses including the Wildrose and Elliott Bay Book Company, The Stranger was first to report.

The new Capitol Hill Charlie’s is under construction just west of 12th and Pike in the building where the Post Options business center and mailbox service was damaged in a destructive 2025 electrical fire.

Just over a year later, work on the new Charlie’s Queer Books is creating a new space, fully ADA accessible and roughly double the size of the Fremont original. Plans include a 50-seat event space, a coffee shop, and a wine bar, with robust plans for open mics, silent book clubs, and author readings.

Owners Charlie Hunts and Madeline Burchard told The Stranger adding a second store addresses shelf and event space limits at the flagship while expanding access to LGBTQ+ literature during a national surge in book bans and restrictive legislation. The couple noted that serving as a queer community anchor on Capitol Hill brings real responsibility, particularly for young trans patrons looking for a welcoming third space, while crediting Stephen Romano at 12th & Pike St. Associates with offering manageable lease terms.

Hunts started Charlie’s in 2023 as a mobile pop-up, hauling curated queer titles in a “disco”-tiled cart across Seattle Pride events. Later that year, the operation established its brick-and-mortar storefront on N 43rd N 36th in Fremont. Continue reading →

Another book shop closing on Capitol Hill — but this one was planned

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There will be another book shop closing on Capitol Hill this June — but this one was planned from the start.

Haunted Burrow Books owner Roxanne Guiney says she is sticking to her plans for the 15th Ave E store to be a brick and mortar experiment.

“HBB has always been a temporary store, and we were thrilled to be here as long as we have been,” Guiney said as she announced a sale to wind the store down into the closure.

The final day of business is planned for June 21st. Continue reading →

CHS photojournalist Alex Garland has a new book — Home: Water of Western Washington

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Garland’s new self-published book pairs 50 images of rivers and falls with poetry, and a quiet reckoning with the concept of “home.”

When the pandemic shut Seattle down in 2020, Alex Garland did what a lot of people did: he went outside. But as a photojournalist and longtime contributor to CHS, he brought a camera and eventually a larger question about what it means to belong to a place.

The result is Home: Water of Western Washington, a self-published book of 50 photographs of moving water paired with 50 poems. Read in sequence, the poems form a single longer story, one that moves through personal history, arrives at the present, and makes space for the Indigenous peoples who have lived on this land since long before European settlement.

It is a reminder of the ways water surrounds us, is a part of us, and influences us. “Water is life.” says Garland.

“As a photojournalist, I’m often around difficult stories. COVID, the killing of George Floyd, CHOP/CHAZ, the unrest and uncertainty of 2020 elections, Russia, on and on. Getting outside and making this book was my way of reconnecting with myself, feeling centered, and exploring this beautiful place,” he tells CHS. Continue reading →

A visit to Haunted Burrow Books, Capitol Hill’s horror and dark fantasy book shop

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This literary spirit is pretty fun in corporeal form. Haunted Burrow Books has made a spooky story-filled home on 15th Ave E.

A recent power outage helped set the appropriate mood in the bustling commercial district on the top of Capitol Hill. Inside Haunted Burrow, a reading group gathered, divining with tarot cards “in the back of the store by electronic candlelight.” Continue reading →

You’re right, the menswear guy — Capitol Hill’s Twice Sold Tales is pretty great

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CHS has been giving love to Capitol Hill’s Twice Sold Tales for years. We celebrated its 35th year of serving Capitol Hill book lovers here a few years back.

Owner Jamie Lutton and her Harvard Ave shop got some more love earlier this month with some attention from a social media tastemaker. Derek Guy — the @dieworkwear fella who has gained a wide following puncturing the tasteless shells of some of the worst people on the planet by sartorial examination — called out Lutton and Twice Sold in a recent post. Continue reading →

‘A home for curious readers,’ Nook & Cranny book shop makes new start off Capitol Hill

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Attendees at Nook & Cranny’s final book club on Capitol Hill (Image: Nook & Cranny)

Capitol Hill has lost a bookstore. Nook & Cranny has packed up its bibliotherapeutic shelves and is nearly ready to open in its new home in a new development in the University Heights neighborhood.

CHS reported here in January as owner Maren Comendant announced the 15th Ave E book shop had lost its lease and was on the hunt for a new location with the help of a community fundraising campaign.

Comendant created Nook & Cranny in the summer of 2022. What if you read about a Capitol Hill bookstore for sale — and bought it? Comendant can tell you. She purchased the business after reading about its previous iteration going up for sale on CHS.

Costs eventually outstripped profit on 15th Ave E and the bookseller’s search took her to Northeast Seattle. Nook & Cranny wound down with its final Capitol Hill book club taking place as March faded — “a lively discussion about Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn.”

With the 15th Ave E shop now dark and empty and awaiting whatever business joins the neighborhood next, Comendant says Nook & Cranny could be open any day in its new spot with plans for an official grand opening on April 26th’s Independent Bookstore Day.

Nook & Cranny will open soon at 5637 University Way NE. Learn more at nookandcrannybooks.com.

 
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Horizon Books ends a 53-year-old Capitol Hill story

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Donald Glover

Horizon was giving away its remaining stock for free last weekend on 10th Ave (Image: CHS Facebook Group)

Let’s close this current chapter of neighborhood classics saying goodbye. Another of the longest running businesses on Capitol Hill closed quietly last weekend. It wasn’t a restaurant, cafe, or bar.

Horizon Books was proudly established on Capitol Hill 53 years ago making it contemporaneous with fellow class of 1971 business licensees Country Doctor Community Health Clinic, architect Roger Newell, and Vogue Coiffure Beauty Salon on our list of the oldest businesses in the area a few years back.

The bookseller that made its name on Capitol Hill long before Elliott Bay Book Company was transplanted to 10th ve quietly turned the page and liquidated its stock last weekend, handing out free books to anybody who stopped by its underground 10th Ave space home to “the largest and finest used books collections in Seattle.” Continue reading →

Seattle Women’s Chorus celebrates free expression with free books in little libraries, Banned & Beloved concert

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(Image: Seattle Women’s Chorus)

12th Ave is home to the city newest little free library as the Seattle Women’s Chorus headquarters has become a center of celebrating free expression with a banned book drive and Saturday’s performances of a Banned & Beloved concert at First Hill’s Town Hall:

Banning books is a nationwide issue. In just the first half of the 2022-23 school year, there were 1,477 instances of individual books banned, an increase of 28 percent from the second half of the prior school year, the vast majority of which are written by or about LGBTQIA+ individuals and people of color and centered on race, sexual orientation and gender, according to PEN America. Continue reading →

After 13 years of bikes and blogging, Tom Fucoloro is ready to tell the story of Seattle biking — even if Capitol Hill would rather walk

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(Image: Seattle Bike Blog)

By Cormac Wolf — CHS Reporting Intern

Tom Fucoloro has been behind the handlebars in Seattle for over 13 years. In that time he’s grown Seattle Bike Blog from a small side project to a pillar of the city’s thriving biking community, even netting a book deal in the process.

He moved to Seattle around 2009 after selling his car to fund his trip and biking full time. Faced with the problems of the city’s bike infrastructure he started looking for anyone who was documenting the experience of Seattle bikers.

“I kind of started looking around for someone else who was writing about bikes. And there wasn’t really anyone who was fully committed to the beat,” he says. “There’s an excellent bike blog down in Portland. And I thought, hey, I could do that in Seattle”

You can find Fucoloro Monday, August 28, at Capitol Hill’s Elliott Bay Book Company to celebrate the book’s release. He’ll be signing books — and likely fielding questions about our future I5-less Seattle

Bikes have been in Seattle longer than cars have, Fucoloro says, but he places the inception of the modern biking community at the first Bicycle Sunday on Lake Washington Boulevard in 1968. Continue reading →

A backbone of a bustling bookstore: Bibliopole turned owner Tracy Taylor talks shop as Elliott Bay Book Company turns 50

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(Image: Elliott Bay Book Company)

Hall, Taylor, and Burgess

By Kali Herbst Minino

Today, staff at Elliott Bay Book Company will lift piles of books up and down the wooden stairs and replenish tall bookshelves for customers to wander through. Tracy Taylor, general manager turned co-owner of the store, continues to work alongside her floor staff as the group of booksellers restock the colorful merchandise celebrating Elliott Bay’s 50th anniversary. Having worked at the store for more than 30 years before purchasing it alongside Murf Hall and Joey Burgess last year, Taylor has been there through the majority of the bookstore’s half-century of history that started in Pioneer Square — and now is an even bigger part of its future on Capitol Hill.

The first time she submitted an application to Elliott Bay, she wasn’t hired.

“The person at that time didn’t hire me because they didn’t think I’d stick around long enough,” Taylor said. “I laugh about that now and say ‘I’m here just to show them that I could stay long enough.’”

Taylor moved to Seattle at the beginning of 1990 after getting a teaching certificate and working at an independent bookstore chain in Denver, the Tattered Cover. She moved to Seattle to pursue teaching, but her love for bookselling changed her plans.

A couple of days later, Elliott Bay gave her a call because the other applicant hadn’t worked out. Learning as much about the bookselling business as possible, she was mentored by the original founder of the bookstore, Walter Carr. Taylor eventually became a co-manager, and when Carr sold the business in 1999, she was offered a position as general manager. Continue reading →