Please join us for our Sayonara Sally party on Sunday, December 3rd, from noon to 4 pm.

I write this letter with such mixed emotions—certainly excitement for what lies ahead, definitely sadness, and absolutely no regrets.

Many people assume when you own a bookstore you do it because you love books. And don’t get me wrong; I do love books. My mother was a librarian and I come from a family of passionate, voracious readers, so it’s not not about the books. But it is way more about the people.

The people I have had the pleasure and honor of meeting in my seventeen-plus years at Broadway Books have been my biggest delights and are what I’ll miss the most. It’s the regular customers I have come to know (and grieved the ones who passed), with whom we’ve shared our love of reading and talked about books and the world in general. It’s the passionate colleagues I work with every day who bring such joy into my world and have seen me through life’s ups and downs. It’s the talented authors and publisher reps I’ve had the fortune of getting to know along the way. This is what I’m going to miss the most: the delightful, kind-hearted, free-thinking people in the world of books.

I will be eternally grateful that thirty-plus years ago, Roberta Dyer and Gloria Borg Olds had the foresight and tenacity to create and nurture a literary watering hole in northeast Portland where people can gather. I was a frequent shopper at the store long before I started working here. And that Roberta, the best in the business, had the courage to bring on this rookie bookseller as her partner and patiently showed me the ropes, while always having my back. And that almost ten years ago Kim Bissell had the generosity to step into Roberta’s very large shoes with grace and enthusiasm and become my partner, and together with our plucky little team we shepherded Broadway Books through a pandemic (and myriad other challenges) while maintaining our foremost commitment to connecting stories, books, and authors with readers.

I thank each of the book-loving, story-loving, author-loving readers who have so generously supported this bookstore over its thirty odd years and who have shown me such kindness and patience and affection. I thank all of my brilliant and hard-working colleagues—current and former—who have brought laughter to my life and made the work seem less like work. I thank my friend Alice, who encouraged me to trust my desire to leave the corporate world and pursue my dream. And I especially thank my wife, Melinda, for her love and support as I followed my passion. Being married to a bookseller, especially during a pandemic, is not an easy path, believe me.

I will miss you all very much, but I hope our paths will continue to cross—perhaps, I hope, in this bookstore, as we all continue to shop at Broadway Books. I wish for Broadway Books many more years as the community hub and shining beacon of literature in northeast Portland and the Portland literary community at large.

Kim--you are amazing, and I am proud of what we have accomplished and created together. I leave knowing the store is in strong hands. Your genuine passion for connecting books with readers and celebrating storytelling will enable you, along with your great team, to guide the bookstore as it moves forward and evolves with changes in the industry, the city, and the world. I am so excited for what the future holds for Broadway Books under your creative leadership!

I leave humbled and grateful for all this opportunity has given me. Carefully curating an inventory filled with delight and exploration and getting to know so many of you along the way has been my honor; I am glad that I will be continuing to curate a little bit longer. Now I look forward to actually finishing the books I start! With all my heart, thank you.

"Bookstores are story ambassadors. They are hope agents. They are imagineers and dream merchants."

--Brian Doyle

We will be offering a special sale on Sunday: 18% off--because Sally has worked here almost 18 years--any book that we have or can order from Sally's list of favorite books and authors (The list will be available at the store that day.) This is an in-store only sale for Sunday, December 3rd.