The National Endowment for the Humanities has announced that it has granted the Maine Humanities Council $250,000 to teach people about Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism.

Says Samaa Abdurraqib, Associate Director of the Maine Humanities Council:

People have been really intrigued by these texts that they’ve maybe never heard about before… Or maybe they’ve been curious about sci-fi, and they’ve never read sci-fi by Black and brown authors before.

The program will ...Read More

UK bookstore chain Waterstones has arranged to acquire academic bookseller Blackwell’s, which has 18 stores in the UK and also runs Heffers in Cambridge. Waterstones recently acquired bookstore chain Foyles, and the hedge fund that owns Waterstones, Elliott, also owns Barnes & Noble.

See this listing and more like it in the April 2022 issue of Locus.

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Amazon announced plans to close all 68 of its US and UK brick-and-mortar shops: Amazon Books, 4-Stars, Pop Ups, and shops carrying toys and home goods. Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in 2015, 5,500 square feet of retail space with another 2,000 for storage, stocked with 5,000-6,000 titles. Amazon grocery stores will remain in operation. “Workers will receive severance or can receive help finding jobs at any company stores ...Read More

Bookseller Don Blyly has announced on his GoFundMe page that beloved Minneapolis MN specialty store Uncle Hugo’s/Uncle Edgar’s has found a new location, and hopes to open later this year.

We reached agreement on the price of the building that I wanted to buy for the new Uncles location and I passed along the earnest money check to my real estate agent midweek and he passed it along to the ...Read More

Angry Robot has a new logo and an updated website:

We are happy to share our shiny “Maschinenmensch” inspired logo… designed and created by Kate Cromwell, a senior designer at Watkins Media. The logo goes hand in hand with our new website, which we’ve been soft launching for the past few weeks, and will be featuring on our books, starting with Ciel Pierlot’s Bluebird in February 2022. We feel that ...Read More

Barnes & Noble has announced its list of 11 best books of 2021. Titles and authors of genre interest include:

Greg Ketter, owner of DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis MN, and one of his employees were attacked November 9, 2020 while closing the store. Ketter wrote,

Ryan and I were just beaten and robbed tonight as we were closing the store. Ryan took some serious punches. I must have been hit in the head but it happened so fast that all I remember is being on the floor as the two ...Read More

Powell’s Books has named Patrick Bassett as its new CEO. Bassett is a business consultant and was previously working with Powell’s as an adviser.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Powell’s permanently closed its store location at Portland International Airport. The store in Beaverton OR is the only Powell’s location to have fully reopened since shutting in March 2020. Its main store in downtown Portland OR remains partially open, and the ...Read More

Powell’s Books has permanently closed their location at Portland International Airport, with owner Emily Powell telling The Oregonian that “closing the airport store is a sad necessity as we face the months ahead…. It’s hard for me to imagine our future without the airport, and without the airport’s seasoned team of booksellers. We hope to return one day.”

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with ...Read More

Barnes & Noble fired unspecified number of employees from its head­quarters in New York who’d been on furlough since March – including longtime SF/fantasy and graphic novel buyer James Killen and fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley. A spokesperson said, “It is with great regret that a number of employees in the corporate office have left our employment. As with so many companies, we evaluate our needs in circumstances much changed by ...Read More

Books-A-Million reopened the majority of its stores, previously closed for the pandemic, in early May. Most of their locations are in the South, where restrictions were lifted earlier than elsewhere in the US; the stores are ‘‘following local guidelines for safe and secure shopping.’’ Ceo Terrance G. Finley says, ‘‘Our booksellers stand ready to share the rich assort- ment of new books and products that we have been curating over ...Read More

Uncle Hugo’s, the oldest independent science fiction and fantasy bookstore in the US founded in 1974, burned down during the recent riots protesting police brutality and racism in the wake of the shocking death of George Floyd during a police arrest in Minneapolis. As of May 30, at least 250 businesses across the Twin Cities had been damaged or destroyed. Some, including Uncle Hugo’s, were destroyed completely by fire or ...Read More

Bookstores are still in dire shape, with the pandemic causing store closures all over. WH Smith in the UK reports that sales were down 25% in March, and in the first week of April they were down 85% over the same period in 2019. They predict similar losses through the end of August, then hope for “gradual improvement in trading through to the end of Decem­ber.” About 60% of their ...Read More

Bookstores are suffering dur­ing the COVID-19 epidemic, with many forced to temporarily close their physical locations. Barnes & Noble shops remain open (except in locations closed by public order), but CEO James Daunt warns his employees that changes are coming, with plans for “substantial reductions in cost,” including cuts of personnel already underway at the home office. He says sales continue well, especially online, but, “We have to assume that ...Read More

San Diego bookshop Mysterious Galaxy is in danger of closing after 27 years. The staff recently received word that they are losing the lease for their shop on Balboa Avenue, and have 60 days to move.

It is with heavy hearts that we share that unless a new buyer and new location are found immediately, Mysterious Galaxy will be forced to close its doors.

For nearly 27 years, Mysterious Galaxy ...Read More