Savoy Bookshop & Café
Driving into downtown Westerly—a Rhode Island community just over the Connecticut border—feels like entering the coastal cousin of Stars Hollow. The sunny Sunday that I visit, I park near the frolicking children-filled Wilcox Park and walk down High Street to find an early summer street festival in full swing. Artists display paintings as local musicians perform to a small, enthusiastic crowd. Turning onto Canal Street, I also see folks lining up for a matinee movie behind the red marquee of the United Theatre, illuminated in twinkling old-school bulbs.
Savoy Bookshop & Café sits at the end of this block, and like the rest of the town, it feels built to charm. Huge glass windows and a personalized black-and-white tile stoop outside; exposed brick walls, embossed ceiling plates, and baseboards with built-in fairy doors inside. It’s hard to believe what was once a decrepit hotel is now home to hundreds of shiny bookshelves. A large counter greets you upon entry, half occupied with coffee-making while the other tempts you with gift items, among them writerly-themed pins and pronoun sticker sheets. One employee serves some teenagers lattes and gives directions to Taylor Swift’s nearby house in Watch Hill. When a butterfly chain of old book pages falls from its perch on a chandelier, another turns it into a crown for her head then asks if I need any help.
“Walking in here every morning is magical,” says store manager Mariana Calderon. “I come in the back and hear all the sounds trickle down the stairwell. It’s lovely.”
“It’s a really vibrant, warm, sensory experience,” adds General Manager Kelsy April. “It usually smells like coffee or muffins or chocolate chip cookies. And the smell of books is amazing. It feels welcoming, like you want to spend time here, to get lost in the stacks.”
April first worked with Savoy’s owner Annie Philbrick at the store’s sister shop Bank Square Books in nearby Mystic, Connecticut, fourteen years ago. “Before my senior year of high school, I walked in to get my summer reading and walked out with a job,” April says. The role started as part-time, but the more April worked with Philbrick, the more interested in bookselling she became. “What a lot of people don’t realize about bookstores is that there’s a big industry behind it, and Annie was really involved it that. I got to follow her and realized there was a career to be had here, not just a job, so I invested myself in the store and really committed to its development and growth.”
In 2015, Philbrick was approached by a local investor about bringing an independent bookstore to Westerly. With support from the Bank Square Books staff, Savoy opened in April 2016. April was brought on to manage. After adding Title IX: A Bookstore in New London to the business last spring, April was promoted to General Manager of all three stores and Calderon, who had been a bookseller for six years at stores across the country, stepped in as Savoy’s store manager.
“I had been seated next to Kelsy at a publisher dinner at a conference, so I already knew about Savoy when the position opened,” says Calderon. “I went to school in New England and really missed it, and my partner was on this side of the country while I was in Denver, so it was a really great opportunity for me to apply to a company that I already knew and respected in a region that I loved. The company attracts passionate, smart, hilarious people. It’s a bunch of good eggs and a pretty unique experience in bookselling.”
April and Calderon describe having the three stores interact with one another as “delightful chaos.”
“It’s three distinct personalities all working toward a common goal, to provide a diverse selection of books so there’s a book for everybody, and booksellers who are passionate and can hand sell those books and have engaging, meaningful conversations with customers,” says April. “We’re all about fifteen minutes apart, but we serve different communities, so you have to let each store’s personality flourish and be its own thing.”
For Savoy, that community is quite varied.
“I moved here right before the summer, so that was my first impression, those crowds of people heading to the beaches,” says Calderon, “but then I got to be here through the holidays and the start of the slow season, when you’ll pretty much only see your regulars and dedicated locals. It’s a good balance.”
Regulars for Savoy fall into a few different camps. “I think our café might be the one that opens the earliest in the immediate downtown area, so we get a lot of businessmen who come in before they head into the office for a cup of coffee and buy books occasionally,” says April. “But there are also the local regulars who come in for a book every day, and the summer regulars that come in from Memorial Day to Labor Day to load up on books, and the online regular who uses our local delivery.”
Local delivery as well as building out a shipping center in a section of the store’s children department were changes made to Savoy over the course of the pandemic. The store also struggled early on with reminding customers about mask mandates and keeping up with dining guidance due to the hybrid café and bookshop model.
“It’s just been a lot of having to be really adaptable,” says Calderon, “but people have really been pretty good going with the flow to keep people safe.”
“We have been living with all of these changes for the past two years, so it feels normal,” adds April.
One silver living over the pandemic that both April and Calderon have noticed is a heightened awareness of supporting indie bookstores industry-wide and an increase in pre-orders as a response.
“There’s been an increase in the amount of education customers have gotten into how bookstores work,” says Calderon. “People understand now that when we ask you to pre-pay for a pre-order, it’s not just us asking because we’re greedy. It helps us not to have to put the money up front and then hope to get it back later.”
April agrees, and attributes everyone in the industry, from authors to publishers to Bookshop.org with helping to make this process more transparent for consumers. “When you order front list books, you’re essentially hedging your bets on how many copies you’re going to sell, and during a pandemic where nothing is guaranteed, you really want to do your best to guarantee those sales,” they say. “It’s a collective tribute to bookselling and how well we all work together that we had this sort of rallying cry of, ‘Pre-order your books!’ and it’s working. It doesn’t make it easier but at least you understand why it is the way it is.”
Heading into the summer, both booksellers are trying to stay positive, but they are also already having to purchase stock heading into the Christmas season thanks to ongoing supply chain issues.
“I wouldn’t still be doing this after fourteen years if I didn’t believe in what we were doing. But I’m also a realist, and you can’t avoid the real threats to the longevity of bookstores through the supply chain as well as the attacks on books that are happening around the country,” says April. “I’m optimistic because I love bookselling and really believe in what we’re doing, but I see the threats that are down the road for us and the future obstacles that we may have to overcome.”
“It’s been a good year. Customers have just been wonderful for me. It feels good to be in the store, like we’re doing great,” says Calderon. “And more broadly for indie bookstores, as many conflicts and questions that are constantly happening with the industry, very specifically in New England bookselling there is so much optimism, opportunity, and care for the people within the industry and for the industry as a whole.”
Recommendations from the Bookseller
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey
Calderon is super excited for this upcoming darkly gothic thriller about a woman who returns to her estranged, dying mother despite the trauma around the house after her father was arrested there when she was twelve on charges of being a serial killer, only to find ever more new, haunting things about the home when she arrives. “It’s not usually my genre, but I’ll read anything from this author,” Calderon says. “It was particularly creepy and devastating. I had to lock my doors, find my partner in the other room, and be like, ‘You still there?’”
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
You’re going to have to wait almost a year to get your hands on this debut novel, but April confirms the queer space opera is worth the wait. “Kyr has been born and raised on a space station and has been taught that the people who live on the station are the last human warriors, that the Earth has been destroyed by these aliens and the warriors will seek revenge,” she explains. “But as the story moves forward, you realize there’s more to it and that might not be reality.” If unlikeable main characters, queer themes, and accessible sci-fi are you jam, then get ready to add this to your To Be Read stack next spring.
Fine: A Comic About Gender by Rhea Ewing
What started as a small-town project interviewing queer individuals in their Midwestern college town sprawled into a decade-long, country-wide project for Ewing, all powered by questions about gender expression and identity. “It’s really interesting to look at all of the historical answers Ewing has,” says Calderon, also noting that the book toys with memoir in tandem with oral history. It’s also been noted for its “great documentary power” by Alison Bechdel.
Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional by Isaac Fitzgerald
Already listed on many media outlet’s tip summer book lists, this memoir-in-essays about Fitzgerald’s journey to take control of his life after traumatic, confusing beginnings is slated to be a hit. April became interested after meeting Fitzgerald at a NEIBA dinner a few months back. “I don’t typically read memoirs and I didn’t think I would resonate so much with a cis gendered straight white man, but holy smokes,” they say. “The way he’s able to talk about really difficult things in his life with such elegance, poise, exploration, honesty, and transparency, as well as talking about masculinity and what that means for him? It’s just really, really good.”
