MARFA — Since opening its doors on Sunday, Stop & Read has nearly sold out of all its cookbooks. Marfa’s newest book store, a project of Marfa resident Kendall Weir, is offering a wide variety of books, with the aim of inclusion, and a bit of innovation too.
Weir herself has been digging into more cookbooks lately. “I’m trying to be a better at-home cook since I no longer eat out at restaurants,” she says, referencing her penchant for avoiding crowds during this year’s coronavirus pandemic.
Along with a new interest in cookbooks, Weir loves fiction, short essays and personal memoirs, but currently, she prefers “anything light,” she says with a laugh.
Her shop offers more than just her personal taste though. A peek through its tall glass windows on San Antonio Street reveals a bright and colorful array of books against all white walls and shelving. The shop has a whole wall of books for children, shelves for young adults and adult readers alike, popular titles and books for poetry fans or the aspiring green thumb. “We’re definitely not a niche bookstore,” Weir says from the perch of her shop stool this week.
When Weir arrived in Marfa from Philadelphia in March of 2017, she wasn’t looking for work. Like many more recent Marfa transplants, Weir had a remote job, allowing her to move anywhere.
She was working in the field of experiential marketing from then, all the way until COVID-19 hit. The job was “really based on the ability for people to gather,” she says, “and when people can’t gather, that sort of renders that industry underwater.”
When she got laid off during the pandemic, Weir didn’t feel like she was going to find a comparable job while still being able to remain in Marfa – so she’d have to make her own employment if she wanted to stay. “I found it much more peaceful to be living here than in the city,” so she became determined to find a way.
Fortunately, Weir already had the inkling of an idea to open a business centered around books. A year and a half before coronavirus hit, she was thinking about ways to create a book service. She had the rough concept: a subscription service that’s curated by artists every month.
“At the time I had a full time job and it didn’t seem feasible,” she says. But suddenly, as 2020 took hold, things were falling into place. The chance to rent a spot in Brit Webb’s old service station fell into her lap – and inspired her service station-esque business name.
Weir calls the business her “pandemic pivot,” something many workers across the United States are considering as certain industries have been decimated during the prolonged national economic sputter.
Brick and mortar shops have struggled to compete with online sales during the pandemic, but Weir has an answer for that too. The new business owner is ready to meet customers not only in her San Antonio Street shop, but online. “I have a really heavy digital strategy,” she says, something that can be credited to her marketing background.
“Our subscription service is a monthly service curated by artists across all mediums, so in each subscription, you’ll get exposure to an artist that you have maybe heard of or haven’t heard of, they’ll pick two books for you, and there will be some sort of limited edition collaboration to every box,” she explains. “You’ll also have access to an online forum to have book discussions since it’s COVID-world and you’re not really safe to have any public book clubs at the moment, and you’ll get an ‘ask me anything’ with the artist every month, where you can ask about the book, them, their process.”
The subscription service will launch early next year, and Weir hopes that it will reach readers far and wide and expose them to artists in many mediums. She’s already lined up an illustrator from Austin, an indie musician and a drag queen to curate the monthly book box.
“I was very much the kind of child who would get in trouble every night because I’d be under the covers with a flashlight and my mom would come to the room and pull the flashlight and book away and say, ‘You have to stop reading!’” Weir says. She already has young adults requesting books of their own, and hopes to partner with local schools in the future and to launch a children’s story hour outside the shop during warm weather months.
To bolster her inclusionary ethos, she’s added a used books section with the aim of making reading “accessible to everyone at a much lower price point,” and has a slew of Spanish-language titles headed to the shop. “I’m really looking to fill the need the community asked for,” she says. And yes, she takes requests.
Visit https://www.stopandreadbooks.com/ or stop by 317 W. San Antonio Street from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. most days.
