Good morning!
And welcome to Winter Institute 2023!
You made it!
3 years of a pandemic, international shutdowns, a supply chain breakdown, a labor shortage, the threat of a recession, and odds are that your flight was delayed getting here, but you made it.
And we're so glad that you did. As my grandma used to say, y’all are a sight for sore eyes.
I last saw many of you in Baltimore at Winter Institute in January 2020 — it was just six weeks before I started this job and seven weeks before the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.
When I spoke then about the challenges that lay ahead for independent bookstores I neglected to mention the pandemic.
It’s been a long three years with challenges and heartbreak and loss and hard work like we’d never seen before. And yet here you are, your bookstores survived, in fact they grew stronger–forged by fire.
And some of you even opened bookstores during the pandemic. Which is a whole other level of badass.
When I thought about what to say to kick off Winter Institute, I wanted to offer inspiration. And then I realized that this is the inspiration. Us coming together, you all being here — this is inspiring. Inspiration is why we come together. It’s why we have Winter Institute.
So knowing that the well may be dangerously low after the last few years, my hope for this week is that you find inspiration in each other — that you fill the well again — and I hope that this week’s program inspires you to go back and work on your business, take on big challenges, and reinvigorate the great work that you do in the world of connecting readers and books, championing debut and diverse and beloved authors, and creating community. Because the world needs the inspiration of independent bookstores.