Juno Books
Our September Bookshop of the Month is Juno Books, a feminist and queer community bookshop found in Chapel Walk, a historic shopping street in Sheffield. We chatted with co-owners Rosie and Sarah about what made them decide to open the shop, what their customers are buying and their plans for the future. Read on to find out more!
1. What made you want to go into bookselling, and what is your favourite part?
We had been friends since meeting at a baby group back in 2017, but we began to dream up Juno Books during lockdown, when we knew that we wanted life post pandemic to look a bit different for us, and when isolation made us really appreciate the value of community and simple acts like shopping in person. We wanted to create a bookshop and community which highlighted books written by women, queer people, people of colour and minoritised backgrounds, showing the breadth and importance of work being done. We are lucky to have wonderful customers and we love connecting people with their new favourite writers and helping them choose something they will really enjoy and reflects their life experiences or indeed transports them somewhere totally new! We also curate a wide-ranging events schedule and a lot of book groups which run through most of the year, and it’s such a joy bringing new writers to an enthusiastic audience here in Sheffield. It’s also a complete treat to work with each other – we take our work really seriously but there’s always room for a giggle and a lot of tea.
2. Tell us more about your book boxes e.g. who are they for, how do you choose the titles that get included?
Our book boxes are really for anyone – we’ve deliberately designed them to appeal to both avid readers and those who are just discovering the love of reading. Our boxes are both fiction and non-fiction and they cover a wide range of topics and genres. We have collaborated with Feminist Book Society to bring together their favourite feminist books across fiction and non-fiction, which has been great. We also offer a bespoke box service where customers can either request books to be included, or ask us to curate a selection according to their needs, which is really fun!
3. Have you noticed any trends in the books your customers are buying lately?
We’re definitely seeing a lot of love for books in translation, particularly from South East Asia, but also books from European countries as well. There’s also a real appetite for folk horror and femgore, which we are both too scared to read…On the other hand increasingly people are coming in asking for something joyful: when life and the world around us feel hard, it can be very restorative to escape into a good book that inspires hope.
4. If you had to pick one book to recommend that was published in the last year, which would it be?
This is such a hard question! We get it asked a lot and honestly it’s impossible. Sarah’s current favourite has to be The Tower by Thea Lenarduzzi, blending memoir, folklore and fiction in a surprising and moving way set around a tower in which a young woman was imprisoned, and Rosie’s is probably Palm Meridian by Grace Flahive, set in a lesbian retirement home in 2067 featuring a cast of unruly elders, it really meets all the requirements for joy, but will also make you cry.
5. And last, but not least, do you have any exciting plans for the shop in the coming months that you would like to share with us?
We’ve got some great author events coming up at the shop over the Autumn season, which we are really excited about. We are very excited to be reading Long Live the Post Horn (Verso) for our book club! We’re also planning an as yet to be announced BIG collaborative project with other Sheffield indie bookshops so watch this space…