It’s #MarginsBookselling Month! To celebrate, Bookselling This Week spoke to Viniyanka Prasad, Founder and Executive Director of The Word | A Storytelling Sanctuary, to talk about #MarginsBookselling and how celebrations like these keep our communities vibrant and connected.
Bookselling This Week: What is the mission of #MarginsBookselling? What sets it apart from other celebrations of books and bookstores?
Viniyanka Prasad: July is #MarginsBookselling Month, a celebration honoring BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, and neurodiverse booksellers and the independent bookstores working to center voices and stories from these communities. Coordinated by The Word | A Storytelling Sanctuary, this campaign is now in its sixth year, standing as a tribute to the shops that keep our neighborhoods vibrant and as a call to every reader to help keep these vital centers of truth, dreams, and connection alive.
#MarginsBookselling is about spotlighting stores focused on serving communities who are currently facing attack and erasure at further heightened levels — with the goal of increasing visibility and avenues for finding these community-centered spaces. It is also about action: readers know the importance of these safe spaces, but are often uncertain about how to support them in sustained and feasible ways. Yet, without sustained support, and with so much purchasing becoming centralized into large retailers, we lose bookstores of these kinds far too often.
In addition to encouraging visits to stores, The #MarginsBookselling Action Calendar breaks down the feeling of inevitability, and the question from readers and consumers of, “what can I really do?” It offers clear, concrete, manageable options. Through this celebration, we aim to bring readers and stores into greater integration, with readers understanding that they do not have to be passive in watching community hubs disappear from their neighborhoods, and being active does not require stockpiling an expensive stash of books!
BTW: What does it mean to celebrate #MarginsBookselling in 2026?
VP: Now, more than ever, we are in need of the stories that help us spread care and ensure that no one is left behind. As book bans continue to see record highs, as siloing of information has become our standard, it is essential to our dialogue and history to support the vitality of #MarginsBookselling bookstores who focus on curating and elevating the voices getting pushed out of other learning spaces.
Celebrating in 2026 means searching our online #MarginsBookselling map and finding a store to visit, ordering a banned book from your store, hosting a meet-up with your friends at a store, choosing your bookstore as your best coffee shop. It means spreading the word in your community, maybe taking a pic at your nearby shop and making sure your friends know to stop by.
It means deciding that now is the time — the time to be active in fighting for the world we want to live in. Fighting for a safe space in community that connects us to expansive perspectives, new possibilities, and reminders of what we believe in most seems like a pretty good way to get activated.
It also means celebrating the people who are doing this cultural work! It is not easy work; and yet booksellers rarely receive their flowers. Since 2020, we’ve been annually honoring three booksellers who are impacting their communities with the Duende-Word BIPOC Bookseller Award. Nominating a bookseller for the activism, leadership or innovation award may make all the difference in their ability to keep going, whether emotionally or financially.
BTW: What do independent bookstores mean to you, and mean in the wider ecosystem of The Word’s work?
VP: Independent booksellers act as vital champions for books and stories that may otherwise remain under the radar; while major publishing houses may concentrate marketing efforts on a small number of works, and algorithms further entrench that concentration, bookstore handselling can ensure readers’ experience a wider range of what is being created. This is especially crucial for stories centering BIPOC, LGBTQIA2S+, disabled, and neurodiverse communities, as historical experience has shown.
The Word has been working toward an expansive literary ecosystem that embraces the abundance of space for voices from the most vulnerable communities. We know that culture matters. Our cultural spaces help us understand what is possible on our path to a harmonious world. Without independent bookstores serving as these bridges, inviting readers among a vast sea of works to the books they most need, we see fewer and fewer pathways for voices on the margins to illuminate our interconnections.
BTW: What do you hope for the future of #MarginsBookselling?
VP: At the start of this program in 2021, we had approximately 70 stores on our #MarginsBookselling map, and now the list is over 220! To us, this means that with intention we can see bookselling that supports historically excluded communities thriving and continuing to find new avenues of impact. That is our mission as well; each year since 2021 seems to have offered a new, more overwhelming challenge. We hope that each year we’ll listen to what is needed most, and keep building the tools that will respond to each new moment.
You can help us by supporting our #MarginsBookselling efforts with a donation today.