city-of-asylum Archives

UPDATE 4/24/2019:

Please visit Very Local Pittsburgh for an updated Guide to Independent Bookstores in Pittsburgh.

Info on Independent Bookstore Day 2019 events in Pittsburgh is available here.

The last Saturday in April is Independent Bookstore Day, the official hashtag for Independent Bookstore Day is #BookstoreDay. The #BookstoreDay hashtag is a great way to take a peak at how folks across the country are celebrating local booksellers. Indie bookshops across the country are hosting parties and inviting customer and friends to buy books from their local booksellers. If you are interested in learning more about the business of book selling, Kim Lyons wrote a story for the Trib this week, Independent bookshops find unlikely prosperity, that digs into some of the statistics on the brick-and-mortar bookstore trends.

Independent Bookstore Day Events in Pittsburgh

Some of Pittsburgh’s book stores have big plans to celebrate on Saturday. Here are some of the local events for Independent Bookstore Day:

White Whale Books
- 25% off all used books all day long,
- prizes hidden among the stacks
- 12-2pm Baby Loves Tacos pop-up
- 7-9pm release party for Pittsburgh Poetry Review’s newest issue
Nine Stores
- 20% off store wide
City of Asylum Bookshop
- 11:30am: all-ages children’s puppet show with Felicia Cooper and story hour with Bookseller Jen.
- 1:00 – 3:00pm: Book signing with City of Asylum Exiled Writer-In-Residence Osama Alomar
- 1:00pm & 2:00pm: Tours of our Alphabet City building
- a scavenger hunt for kids
- raffles and door prizes
- surprise discounts
- an exclusive, limited edition chapbook by Michael Chabon

Guide to Pittsburgh Independent Bookstores

One of our most popular posts on the blog is our guide to independent movie theaters around town. Just in time for Independent Bookstore Day we bring you a guide to local bookshops around town. In 2015, NextPittsburgh published a guide to independent bookshops in Pittsburgh. In the past two years, Pittsburgh has seen several new bookshops open and we have put together an updated guide to independent bookstores in Pittsburgh which includes a Google map of all 16 shops.

Here are some links/articles/blog posts that are worth a look:

So Me – New Shop in Glenshaw – Check out this post from the Pittsburgh Craft Collective (with photos) of a new shop that has just opened in Glen Shaw. So Me features gifts from local artists and crafters.
A Safe Street in Pittsburgh: Interesting Times : The New Yorker – Pittsburgh's City of Asylum project and the North Side's Sampsonia Way are profiled in the New Yorker. "City of Asylum/Pittsburgh provides sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of death, imprisonment, or persecution in their native countries."
Rusty Waters Apparel – more awesome Pittsburgh t-shirts. Check out the one with the directional arrows – such an accurate depiction of our roadways.

Follow IheartPGH on Twitter – we share more links there almost daily!