How Nevermore Bookstore fosters a literary community in the Northeast Kingdom

Nevermore Bookstore is the only bookstore in Newport, Vermont. Larry Bradley opened Nevermore in 2014, and he runs a writing group at the store a couple times a week.

This winter, reporter Erica Heilman stopped in to talk with Larry and record one of their sessions. This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.

Larry Bradley: OK, why don't we — what do you think, guys? Is that fine?

Writer: I'm good with that one.

Larry Bradley: OK, everybody ready? It's 10:07. We'll go to 10:17.

Erica Heilman: That's the sound of people writing, in the winter, on one of those bleak days that ended about 3:45 p.m. Winters are long in Newport, and there aren't a lot of excuses to get together. But, like in every town, there are a few people who do stuff. Run stuff. Buy the snacks and organize the chairs. Larry Bradley is one of those people. And Nevermore Bookstore is like a cozy living room for the north country. And all writers are welcome.

Larry Bradley: I end up suckering people into coming here: "What are you doing Saturday? Come on into the group." And they come, and I hope that they've enjoyed it. I think that they do or they wouldn't come back.

Writer 1: "Then again towards the tower, in its immensity. With the moon behind it peering downwards, casting a faintness along the tower's edges, that gives the soft intensity of God."

Writer 2: Man, your use of "pilgrim" just over and over and over. I love that. It just nails this imagery into the head of not just like people at the tower, but a certain kind of people and —

Larry Bradley: Newport's kind of eclectic. There's not a lot to do. There's restaurants, there's things like that. There's winter carnival that we have every year. You know, we have that big hole that's — on Main Street, we have this hole that no one knows what to do with. So that's what Newport is. And this, I think, is something that gives people something to do. Because, Lord knows you need it up here.

Writer 1: "It was not a wrinkled sheet of blue, but a muted flat slab of concrete. This was her home, and nothing was left but a calm and ease."

Writer 2: Oh, I like that!

Writer 3: Yeah! That is really good.

Writer 4: I will say that the imagery I got at first was that of scuba gear.

Larry Bradley: I didn't want to do a book club. Everybody likes to do their book clubs in somebody else's kitchen with a bottle of wine. And I didn't want that. I didn't want to have people feel this need that they had to buy the book that they didn't want to read. And so I thought, "Well, I'm a writer, why don't I just try a writing group?"

Writer: I write fast and sloppy, so I sometimes can't read my own writing, but I'll try hard. "She was alone at the edge of the cliffs feeling confused and lost. Nowhere to go. She looked out at the ocean below. The sun's rays reflecting off the wrinkled blue."

Larry Bradley: The smell. The smell of the books. I'm not a book sniffer. I'm not one of those, kind of, weird people that pick up a book and start smelling it, but I do. But there's something about a box of books that smells like grandma's basement.

I love walking into the store in the morning. I go through the books. I walk around the store. I know where everything is. Somebody comes in and asks me for a book, I can take you right to the shelf. The place is not necessarily in the best order, but I can tell you where things are.

Writer: The story is all about this young, dark-skinned man in a very light-skinned medieval city. And he's brought there by a wizard. He ends up making friends throughout the city. And one of them is a fighter, and Tharsis is this fighter and they hang out together and —

Erica Heilman: So, what are you afraid of?

Larry Bradley: I'm afraid that the bookstore would close. And I would have nothing to offer this community. That's what I'm afraid of.

I worked for mental health for 11 years. And that was enough. And so I just one day said, "I'm going to open a bookstore," and everybody at mental health said, "You're not going to make it. No one's gonna read. No one reads up here." And turns out, nine years later, I'm still here.

I have the writing group two times a week. I have a program called Creating Young Readers. The kids come into the store. They get free books — three books wrapped up in newspaper. And the only stipulation I have is that they can't open it while they're here. Because I don't want to see the look of disappointment. They have the book, they read the book, they don't like the book: "I don't want to read about horses." I say, "You can open it in the car. After the car’s started, preferably."

Writer 1: "A familiar heartbeat It has known since before it had ears, a pulsing tugging love at the beginning of its time, the same cosmic maternal compassion that walks it to the end of its sentence."

There we go.

Writer 2: I love that!

Writer 3: What really resonated with me is kind of a personal issue that I don't share very often, but my wife is, has Alzheimer's disease. So what she could do two years ago, she can't do anymore. The words that she had, and she was a writer, she was social worker, and all that's gone. You know, within five years, it's gone. And I don't know what it was in your writing. Somehow that conjured up that in my, in my mind, so thank you.

Larry Bradley: You know, these guys make me shine. They make me feel good about what I'm writing. It's a validation that you don't get from the New York Times, from Poetry Magazine. This is real time, it's real life. It's not you or somebody else reading my work and judging whether it's going to be published. They're a willing audience. And that's what we are all for one another, is an audience.

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