Tucked into the ground floor of a low brick building, Black Spring Books looks as if it’s been a fixture in the neighbourhood for decades. The place is piled high with dusty classics, avant-garde must-haves and tantalising obscurities. A folding street sign reads: LIVE NUDE BOOKS. By the register, watching over the true gems and first editions, is the proprietor, Simona Blat.
A bit like Audrey Hepburn’s Jo Stockton in Funny Face and sporting a similar haircut, Blat is reticent when it comes to herself but effusive about all things printed. The name of the store is borrowed from Henry Miller’s mostly forgotten novel of his childhood growing up in turn of the 20th-century Brooklyn, so when her landlord mentioned that he’d been been born next door, she took it as as sign and named the store in his honour.
The shop came to be through an unlikely chain of events. Blat got her start as a bookseller under the New York literary impresario Michael Seidenberg, who sold books and hosted literary salons out of his unassuming Upper East Side walk-up apartment. In 2019, Seidenberg passed away suddenly. For years, the two of them had contemplated opening a bookstore together in Brooklyn.
Blat was left to handle his affairs after his death and started cleaning out his apartment. She didn’t like the idea of keeping thousands of his books in storage. When she found this space, “I was like, ‘Fuck it. I’ll just put all my books that are in storage here and open up a bookshop.’” Thus Black Spring Books was born.
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