NW Book Lovers
From the Pacific NW Booksellers Association | promoting independents since 1965
  • Find a store
  • NW authors
  • Classifieds
  • Browse
    • N.W. Voices: Essays
    • Conversations: Interviews
    • The Storefront: NW booksellers
    • Face Out:
      Bookseller recommended
    • One Nightstand:
      Reader recommended
    • Award Winners
    • A Cup of News
    • Best Foot Forward
    • Doodles
    • Reading-Related Rambles
    • The Shelf Talker
    • Turning Pages
  • Indie NW Bestsellers
  • About Us
Browse: Home / Christine Deavel

Christine Deavel

Sep

27

2016

Open Books

Seattle’s Open Books: A Poem Emporium
Opens Under New Ownership

From Bookselling this Week By Liz Button on Tuesday, Sep 20, 2016 Seattle’s poetry-only bookstore, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, held its grand reopening on Saturday, September 17, celebrating its new lease on life under the ownership of former customer Billie Swift. This past April, husband-and-wife team John Marshall and Christine Deavel announced they were …

Aug

14

2015

Christine Deavel

Christine Deavel of Open Books:
Not Quite Bidding Goodbye

This week, Christine Deavel, co-owner of Open Books: A Poem Emporium in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle and bookseller for 26 years, announced that she is moving on from the store to accept a position as a family and patient liaison at Harborview Medical Center. Below, we have her sweet letter to Open Books’ customers, followed by an …

Feb

24

2015

Audrey Hepburn beatnik dance in Funny Face

Open Books Opts Out of Traditional Poetry Readings

From Shelf Awareness:  Open Books Drops Readings, Promotes ‘Communal’ Events In an unusual move that runs against the grain of independent bookselling trends, Open Books: A Poem Emporium, Seattle, Wash., last month began a new policy of no longer hosting poetry readings. Owners John Marshall and Christine Deavel said in a store post that the …

Jun

14

2013

Christine Deavel

Poetry on Vacation

What? There’s beach-reading to be found on the poetry shelves? You bet, stretch out on the chaise and we’ll dip into a few. Sometimes the summer books that beckon are playful, quirky, maybe even refreshingly unsettling. James Tate’s contemporary poetry fables fit that definition to a T, and his latest collection, The Eternal Ones of …

Mar

8

2013

3

remarks

“Where’d You Go, Customer X?”

Don’t worry– this isn’t a scorching screed or a pitiful whine. It’s not even a calmly reasoned exegesis on the state of contemporary bookselling or contemporary poetry or (Lord help us) both. At least that’s not my intent. Lately I’ve been thinking about all the people over the years who unexpectedly stopped coming into my …

Jan

18

2013

4

remarks

A Holiday Occupation

In our bookstore, micro would be the appropriate way to refer to the size of the staff. Staff, such a wonderful word, both a stick to aid walking and those who work at keeping an operation functioning. Since at Open Books there are only two of us, each capable of doing every task required, each …

Dec

24

2012

Poetry, Wildlife Management, and the Inescapable:
A Conversation with Lucia Perillo

2012 was quite a year for Lucia Perillo. Her first collection of short stories, Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain, was published by W. W. Norton and selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of the year. Her sixth collection of poetry, On the Spectrum of Possible Deaths, from Copper Canyon Press, …

Nov

29

2012

A Big Year for Poetry Books
(Or Rather, A Year for Big Poetry Books)

Ah, the pleasures of a slender volume of verse. Like the one leaf left glowing on a late autumn tree, it is a captivating thing, made all the more powerful by its hint of the ephemeral, its brevity. Yet a tome of poems can be equally enthralling, with a pleasurable heft that comes not just …

Sep

8

2012

Deavel Wins a Washington State Book Award

We’re very proud of  Christine Deavel, co-owner of Open Books: A Poem Emporium (and an NWBL columnist!), who just won a Washington State Book Award for her poetry collection, Woodnote. We interviewed her about the collection last year. Congrats, Christine! Congrats also to fiction winner Peter Mountford (A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism); biography/memoir winner …

Aug

23

2012

“That Cool Place”

I’ve been thinking about white space recently. Perhaps it’s the heat and hubbub of summer that has me pondering that cool place where there’s room to breathe. That quiet space for contemplation.

In poetry, white space, though lacking words, is as alive as any text it surrounds. It reverberates with the echoes of the words that came before. It shimmers with possibility—what will come next?

Older posts »

Search

Facebook icon Twitter icon Instagram icon
What are you reading?

Advertising information

We recommend

Of N.W. interest

  • Book Nook Bits
  • Brad Craft: Used Buyer
  • Literary Arts
  • Northwest Passages Book Club
  • Oregon Humanities
  • Paper Fort
  • Powell's Books Blog
  • Propellor
  • Seattle Indie Bookstore Day
  • Seattle Review of Books
  • The Complete Epiphanies
  • The Oregonian
  • The Seattle Times

Of national interest

  • Bookstore Romance Day
  • Bowie Bookclub
  • Christian Science Monitor
  • Independent Bookstore Day
  • Indie Bob Spot
  • Indiebound
  • LA Times Jacket Copy
  • largehearted boy
  • Literary Hub
  • New York Times Books
  • NPR Books
  • Salon.com
  • The Rumpus

On the industry

  • Algonquin Books
  • Book Publishers Northwest
  • Booksellers of America
  • Bookselling This Week
  • Northwest Assoc. of Book Publishers
  • PW Daily
  • Shelf Awareness

On kids’ books

  • 7 Impossible Things Before Breakfast
  • From Tots to Teens

For library lovers

  • An Embarrassment of Riches
  • Awful Library Books
  • EarlyWord
  • Shelf Talk
  • Unshelved
  • Home
  • Find a Store: Plan a Visit or Shop Online!
  • NW authors
  • Classifieds
  • Indie NW Bestsellers
  • About Us

© 2010-2022 NW Book Lovers

A production of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.