***Listeners, this week we have our last replay episode before we start back with Season 4 next week with an all new group of fascinating bookish guests. We’ve been recording over the hiatus, and we are excited to introduce you to more book lovers in just a few more days.

Our rebroadcast this week is from Season 3, episode 58 with Clare Wallace, the executive director of South Louisville Community Ministries which also runs The Rosewater bookstore in coordination with The BookWorks. The community bookstore opened just as COVID was hitting the city in the spring of 2020, and it took several months for them (and everyone) to figure out the new normal.

but they are up and running with regular hours, a really great selection of books, and gift items made by artisans in the neighborhood. Located on South 3rd Street, The Rosewater’s regular hours are:

Wednesday & Thursday, 10:00 - 4:00

It also offers mystery bags. Book lovers can complete a Google Form and request books from a certain genre. If you’re like me and spend way too much time in the house, something as simple as a mystery bag of books you can pick up curbside is the kind of excitement I’m down for in 2021.

This past weekend many people recognized Independent Bookstore Day, a day to be extra appreciative of their local bookstores and booksellers that give booklovers all the feels. Everyone loves a bookstore, don’t they?

Our guest today certainly does. When Clare Wallace visits a new place, she always looks for the closest used bookstore. This gave her the idea to open The Rosewater, aptly named after her favorite Kurt Vonnegut book, which she envisions as a comforting living room for everybody. Clare is the executive director of South Louisville Community Ministries, a nonprofit that provides emergency assistance for residents of South Louisville facing crisis, and she was looking for a visible way to do outreach in the neighborhood. The bookstore serves several purposes; to create a warm community space, to bring life to parts of the neighborhood that have seen hard times, to provide transitional employment for residents in crisis, and to offer a service that the neighbors want!

Clare grew up in a house filled with hundreds of books with a mother who worked for a publisher but her favorites were those that explored other worlds. After Clare left college, she literally went around the world working in international development and as a Peace Corps volunteer. When she settled in Louisville, she chose to land in the most diverse part of the city which is filled with a wide variety of different ethnicities and income levels; Clare works to bring people together in her adopted hometown.

Clare tells us how The Rosewater is pivoting from traditional retail sales to creative services like mystery book boxes delivered to your door due to Covid, why creating a comforting community space for the neighborhood is important to her, and how learning to deal with failure is a skill she learned abroad that helps her create new projects today.

Books Discussed in this Episode:

1- A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle