Brooklyn Author Plans to Open New Indie Bookstore in BoCoCa Area

COBBLE HILL, BROOKLYN — It's been a devastating year for the literary scene in brownstone Brooklyn. (And for pretty much everything else.) We were already reeling from the summertime closure of the 30-year-old Community Bookstore in Cobble Hill — a lean-to labyrinth of dusty hardcovers, cheap paperbacks and probably a friendly roach or two — when news broke Tuesday morning that the 35-year-old BookCourt, another Cobble Hill institution, would also be closing by year's end.

But unlike for everything else, there is hope yet for the BoCoCa-area book market.

In the nick of time Tuesday, just when we thought our sense of childlike wonder might really have shriveled and died for good, one of brownstone Brooklyn's most well-known young authors — Emma Straub, whose latest novel, "Modern Lovers," is set among the romantic victorians of Ditmas Park — announced on her website that she and her husband, Michael Fusco, plan to open a new bookstore, tentatively called "Books Are Magic," in Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill or Carroll Gardens.

"A neighborhood without an independent bookstore is a body without a heart," Straub writes. "And so we’re building a new heart."

She says she and her husband have "spent the last few months looking at spaces, getting our math together, and thinking about light fixtures. We have secured initial funding and crossed our fingers. And so, dear Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Columbia Waterfront, and beyond…you won’t be lonely for long. Books are magic, and we want to make sure that this neighborhood is positively coated in bookish fairydust for decades to come."

The shop's opening date is still TBA. But you can stay updated on its progress by subscribing to Straub's newsletter. (Or to the BoCoCa Patch newsletter, if you haven't already!) Straub also urges you to reach out directly with "ideas to share, hands to lend, or some magic of your own to add to the mix."

Pictured at top: The Community Bookstore, may its memory be a blessing. Photo by Simone Wilson