Third House Books & Coffee to Highlight Small Presses, Local Writers

Third House Books & Coffee is the brainchild of Kiren Valjee, a former English Literature doctoral student who is living out his dream of opening a bookstore in his adopted community of Gainesville, Florida, home to the University of Florida and numerous intellectuals, artists, and writers.

The bookstore, situated in Gainesville’s downtown area, not far from the university, is set to open in late March or early April, depending on renovations to its 650-square-foot space. Its inventory will primarily be titles from small independent presses and local writers.

The bookstore’s moniker pays homage to sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s concept that having a “third place” — another social setting besides the home (the first place) and the workplace (the second place) — is essential to creativity.

Valjee said he hopes his store will feel like “a homegrown and comfortable sanctuary” and serve as a hub of creativity for the local students, writers, and artists that congregate downtown.

“Gainesville has a really intellectual artistic and literary community independent of the university, and I really wanted to tap into that population,” he said.

Well-known writers who live in Gainesville include Padgett Powell; David Leavitt; Cynthia Barnett, author of the bestseller Rain: A Natural and Cultural History (Crown); and Lauren Groff, the National Book Award nominee for her novel Fates and Furies (Riverhead).

“I had the chance to have coffee with Lauren to talk about the opening, and she was very supportive. She’s a wonderful person, just so incredibly personable,” said Valjee. “She’s offered to do a reading at the grand opening.”

Third House is located in a retail space formerly occupied by Gainesville’s Wine and Cheese Gallery, which moved next door and changed its name to Downtown Wine and Cheese. Valjee is subleasing the Gallery’s former dining room and doing most of the renovations himself.

The store’s café will feature farm and café tables, pastries from a local baker, and French press coffee; future plans call for the addition of an espresso machine. Valjee is also hoping to host open bar events with the wine-and-cheese shop next door that would encourage customers to circulate between both businesses with their beer and wine in hand.

‘We will be open late to encourage that sort of traffic,” said Valjee. “People are really excited to see this space open again after it closed last April. It also has this wonderful huge storefront window so it gets all this great light in the morning and afternoon.”

Valjee said he plans to let the University of Florida’s MFA writing program host readings at the store and he will also offer the space as a venue for the annual Florida Writers Festival, which brings more than 100 authors to the university.

Although Third House’s stock will be comprised of 80 to 90 percent books from small presses, Valjee said that he is not worried about the viability of a business model that allows for so few titles from major publishers. The reason, he said, is the support shown by community members, who helped him raise $3,745 in start-up funding last year through an Indiegogo campaign.

“So much of our community, in terms of the artists and intellectuals and writers who live there, are aligned with the idea of shop local,” said Valjee. “Everyone here is extremely talented but many of them aren’t necessarily well known outside of Florida, and they are very excited about having a place that supports people like them.”

A few of the small presses Valjee said he’s happy to promote include Coach House Books, an independent Canadian publisher; Boss Fight Books, which publishes books about classic video games; Agnes Fox Press, a publisher of poetry chapbooks; The Feminist Press; Homegrown Press; and Sixth Finch Press, the publishing arm of the art and poetry journal Sixth Finch.

Third House will carry about 400 titles at a time, and Valjee said he plans to further diversify his offerings with comics and graphic novels, a section for unique children’s literature, and a nonfiction collection. He will also sell books by some of the talented writers he met in the MFA and PhD programs at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Florida.

“As a loyal customer in a local record shop, for example, you like to see new stock coming in pretty regularly,” Valjee said. “So, since [Third House] is a small store, the plan is to have titles rotating a lot. There won’t be too many titles, but everything will be well curated. I’m going to put out whatever piques my interest — I want be able to share that with people.”

Valjee’s plans for Third House Books also include a reading club program whose members will pay $10 a month for the license to read any title for free as long as they stay in the store. Each month, members will also get 10 percent off all books in the store and 30 percent off the purchase of one book.

“I’m hoping to use this program to promote Third House Books as a community gathering place and to encourage people to hang out at the store,” Valjee said.