We never planned to write this book. In 2017, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa was working on an epic poem and part of it took place at Classics Books. Independently, I was working on some flash fiction that also took place at Classics Books. We bumped into each other (at Classics Books) and decided that we should collaborate on a collection of poems and stories that all take place at our favorite bookstore. We thought a collection of excellent work with a shared setting–and a shared love of bookstores and the people in them–might be an exciting project. We reached out to some of our favorite writers and artists to make it happen.