I’m lucky enough to live in Oxford, MS, home of Square Books, and you’d better believe I hang out there all I can, so I’m pals with the folks who work there.  One of them, Ted O’Brien, I’ve known a long time.  I first met him in New Orleans, when I did an event at Garden District Books, where he’d worked for years.   He was displaced from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and started working at Square Books, where we resumed our acquaintanceship.   Ted now lives in Germantown, TN, near Memphis, and commutes to Oxford (about an hour) to the bookstore a mile from my house.

This summer, outraged by the proposal that the solution to school shootings is for teachers to carry guns, I wrote a guest essay for The New York Times.  It was published online August 8, and that was a big thrill for me (I’m mostly a poet, which means my “readership” is generally limited to my mom).   I loved reading the comments in the comments section (well, MOST of the comments) but for someone who’s partial to the physical, the digital version was nice but just a lead-up to the day the print version appeared.  I also needed the print version for my 82-year-old mother, who “doesn’t believe in the internet.”  Luckily, Square Books gets the Sunday paper.  I contacted the store and arranged for Ted to put aside two copies for me.

But then I heard from my editor that my piece had been bumped from Sunday to the Wednesday edition.  I emailed Square Books to cancel my hold on the Sunday edition and explained why.  How could I possibly get a paper copy now, I fretted.  Ah, no worries, Ted emailed back; he would stop by a place in Memphis that sells them, then bring them to Square Books.  When I went to pick them up, they were behind the counter, marked “No charge.”   The whole experience reminded me yet again why I love Indie bookstores in general, and my beloved Square Books in particular.  Like the Santa from Miracle on 34th Street advising customers to shop at Kimballs when Macy’s couldn’t provide a certain desired toy, Ted had procured my paper copies by stopping by the Germantown Barnes and Noble.  I went upstairs to find Ted and thank him, and snapped this photo of him behind the coffee bar.  Thanks, Ted. Thanks, Square Books. Thanks, independent bookstore owners.

Beth Ann Fennelly, the poet laureate of Mississippi from 2016-2021, teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi.  Fennelly has published three books of poetry and three of prose, most recently, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs, which was a 2018 SIBA Southern Book Prize finalist and an Atlanta Journal Constitution Best Book.  She lives with her husband, Tom Franklin, and their three children in Oxford, MI. www.bethannfennelly.com/