Will Evans, founder of Deep Vellum Publishing, a non-profit literary publisher based in Dallas, Texas, has opened a bookstore.
In a post for Lithub.com, the publisher of the literary imprint explained why he wanted to move beyond just book creation and get into retail. Here is an excerpt from the piece:
When I moved to Dallas two and a half years ago, there were no literary publishers left in the city—SMU Press had just shut down—and there were no independent bookstores selling new books in the city. And not just an absence in Dallas, but there were none in the entire Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex either. This is a region the size of some countries, with over seven million people, and it had no bookstores. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t cool stuff going on all over the area, especially in Dallas. And that definitely didn’t mean there hadn’t been tons of amazing literary history in Dallas, and in the region, whether or not anybody in or outside of the city was aware of it.