Libraries Are Where I Experience the Greatest Thrills 

I have lived my life in libraries far more than in bookstores, and so I’d like to tell you about one of my greatest library-related thrills. This isn’t about the day I was allowed into the adult section, or the way, when I was eleven or twelve, I used to fill my bike basket with as many books as would fit and return them read in only a few days.

This happened one day when I was squatting in front of the shelves of new books at Boston’s main Public Library in Copley Square. I was way down around the W’s, and someone came along to browse way up above me in the A’s and B’s, and it happened that my novel Tender Mercies was one of the books. So I watched a woman take my book off the shelf; she looked inside the cover, glanced, I think, at my picture on the back flap, flipped through the pages, and I waited, holding my breath, to see if she would take it,  and she did! I have seen high piles of my books decrease in bookstores as they’ve been sold; I’ve signed hundreds of books behind one of those little tables; but no sale has pleased me as much as seeing someone do exactly as I’ve done all my life: walk off in anticipation of reading my words, just as I did at twelve. Obviously I’ve never forgotten this perfect moment.—Rosellen Brown

About Rosellen Brown

Rosellen Brown teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has published five novels, including Civil Wars, Before and After and Half a Heart, three books of poetry, and a book of stories, Street Games. She has been honored by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.