Family owned bookstore and café Books Upstairs was awarded the O’Brien Press Bookseller of the Year.
The shop’s manager Louisa Earls discussed, in an interview with Trinity News, how the award is granted on a nomination basis by a rotating panel of judges. In previous years it has been given to significant names in the Irish book selling world, such as Hodges & Figgis.
When selecting Books Upstairs for the award, Earls said she believes the panel looked at a “range of stuff, like literature, atmosphere”.
Books Upstairs had been unaware that they were even under consideration until the announcement ceremony at an international booksellers conference. The award left Earls “really shocked” and felt something like an “Oscar winning moment.”
Only a turn away from Trinity on D’Olier Street, with a previous location on College Street, Books Upstairs has been a Trinity student hotspot for 150 years. Since their move and expansion, the store has enhanced its status as a haven for the library-weary by introducing community engagement initiatives.
Each month the store hosts a plethora of free book launches and guest speakers, most of which are Irish. Earls is “really proud of that” because “outside of the festival circuit, there isn’t really a place… regularly doing conversation style events”.
Indeed, for an independent bookstore it is no small task to bring in authors. Earls said: “you take a risk when you do things like that, and you know, we invest a lot of time and money into doing it.”
Additionally, Earls and her father, the former manager Dr Maurice Earls, have focused on Irish culture and writing. The original idea for the store, says Earls, was to have “the best of Irish writing, right next to, like the best of the international writing.”
Part of that initiative has been highlighting contemporary Irish writers in their workshops and often selling independent works. Many of these are authored by people who “don’t make any money off of it, but who are doing it because they love it”. Earls added: “our whole ethos is to make this kind of writing available.”
Earls thinks the prestigious award might help the store in its quest to do more for the community and Irish authors. Though she thinks it might be too early to tell, she says they’ve “had a good February, and February isn’t usually a good month.”
Aside from the prestige, everyone at books upstairs is “really, really pleased” with the recognition. Earls said “you don’t necessarily know that anyone is really noticing what you’re doing, let alone like appreciating it”.
