In the Company of Authors Of Every Stripe
She was a teacher and school principal before
her husband asked her one day: so, what do you really
want to do? Elaine Petrocelli chose what many civilized adults,
even many writers, have fantasized about—opening a bookstore.
The other option in this category seems to be a bed-and-breakfast,
but succeeding at either is a lot harder than it looks.
The personable president of Book Passage has
bucked the odds since starting with a small Larkspur bookshop
in 1976. Today, with the more than 25 author appearances each
month plus book groups such as CWC and many writing conferences,
her flagship Corte Madera store is truly our “village
square” for the reading and writing community. And the
story only gets better with Petrocelli’s recent expansion
to San Francisco’s Ferry Building.
In 1976, Publishers Weekly named her
Bookseller of the Year. An online publication recently dubbed
Book Passage “the best book store in the world.”
In an interview with The International Traveler
last year, she said, “We have a lot of writers who spend
time in the store. Isabel Allende is here almost every day….
I call her the ‘spirit of Book Passage.’ There are
a lot of famous writers who make a trip up here when they are
in town. In Marin, there are over a hundred well-known writers
living here and we get a lot of them drop by the store. ”
Don’t miss Elaine Petrocelli’s sure-to-be-illuminating
tale about the art and commerce of independent bookselling in
the 21st century.
