Austin is a bookish city – it might not be the first adjective that jumps to mind, but it’s true. Regularly ranked among the best cities for book lovers, our town is home to a flourishing literary community. The proof is in the Austin Texas Book Trail, the second annual self-guided tour of 29 independent bookstores in the metropolitan area that returns April 12-13.
Bookseller and Austin Texas Book Trail co-founder Michelle Zhang connects her vision of the event to Jackie Wang’s 2023 memoir, Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun.
“It’s kind of a weird one – part memoir, part travel diary, part Tumblr blog,” Zhang says. “But at its core it’s all about connecting with people and cities in a very punk, queer, DIY way. Which is a lot of what I love about bookstores and the literary community here.”
Zhang and her collaborator Jackie Rangel revitalized the book trail in 2024 from a 2017 bookstore crawl as a way to celebrate and support independent bookstores and booksellers while offering readers the opportunity to explore local shops.
For Rangel, Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett speaks to the trail’s aim of connecting parts of the literary community.
“I remember being surprised by [the book’s] layers and the way it was in dialogue with so many other books, not to mention the act of writing itself. It felt like more of an invitation to pull different literary threads than a burden of heavy-handed erudition,” she explains.
“This is how I feel about the spirit of a day spent exploring our range of distinct bookstores,” Rangel continues. “I’ll follow my own curiosities, tap the always-brilliant booksellers for guidance, then maybe – hopefully – discover a new contour of my mind in the process.”
Zhang urges attendees to “check out bookstores they have never heard of. It’s great to support the bookstores you already love and frequent, but a huge part of this is to get people to go to places they haven’t been to.”
Their partnership with CapMetro, which is offering free one-day bus and bikeshare passes, makes this mission even easier. Likewise, librarians at Austin Public Library matched each store along the trail with an encapsulating book to help readers get acquainted with the shops.
If you’re not sure where to start, here are two suggestions:
Black Pearl Books
(7112 Burnet)
Black Pearl Books, Austin’s only Black-owned bookstore, has held court on Burnet for nearly three years.
Born in Katrina and Eric Brooks’ house in late 2019, Black Pearl got its start online during COVID and, later, in pop-up shops and markets, much like the ones they now host in their brick-and-mortar store.
“We’re very much involved in the community. It’s really been awesome to utilize the bookstore as a means to be of service to folks,” Eric says.
Creating space to foster empathy and bring people together is fundamental to Black Pearl’s mission.
Their book selection boasts everything from classics to new releases, with an emphasis on connecting readers to diverse representation and texts that educate.
“There’s a lot of information that we’ve got to pick up on our own and the easiest way to do that is through a book – whether that’s a fiction title, whether that’s a nonfiction title,” Eric says.
Amid plentiful publications, Eric admits it can be hard to know where to begin.
“The best way to find that entry point is if you can get into an independent bookstore, someone gives you a couple of recommendations, you sit down, you look at the jacket, maybe you check out a chapter [or] half a chapter as opposed to kind of flying blind.
“We’re not simply here to sell you a thing. [When] you come here, we can have a conversation and help you figure out what may be best for this particular point in time and what you’re interested in,” Eric says.
“I think that bookstores give people a place to know that they can be themselves, that they’re going to find the books that are under attack, that they’re going to be safe in these places.” – Birdhouse Books owner Abby Strite
Birdhouse Books and Gifts
(5925 Burnet)
Birdhouse Books opened in September 2024, just around the corner from Black Pearl.
When owner Abby Strite thinks of the inspiration behind the store, she thinks of Turning Twelve by Austin author Kathryn Ormsbee.
“It’s got everything,” Strite says. “It’s a local author, which we are super focused on; it’s a queer kid, which we are super focused on.”
Birdhouse sells works for every age group, with a bent toward queer stories, and hosts a particularly robust elementary-level section, a rarity in small shops. Strite’s own kids lend a hand with the selection, writing “shelf-talker” recommendations for their favorite reads.
“In their best form, [bookstores] are a space where you can really express yourself, what you love, what’s important to you, and learn about another person almost in a shorthand,” Strite says.
She hopes the book trail introduces readers to Birdhouse as another home for inclusive stories, readings, and events, like their monthly drag storytimes.
“This is really important right now,” she says. “Books are under attack, education is under attack. I think that bookstores give people a place to know that they can be themselves, that they’re going to find the books that are under attack, that they’re going to be safe in these places.”
Strite finds the books in her banned books section fly off the shelf. “People are hungry for them,” she says.
Local author Callie Collins’ new novel explores Austin’s music history
Local author Callie Collins’ Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine explores the city’s music history through a fictional honky-tonk on Austin’s frontier.
Collins grew up surrounded by stories of her parents’ Seventies and Eighties Austin, and spent her own share of time in the city’s bars and honky-tonks in the early 2000s. Classic haunts like Armadillo World Headquarters and contemporary mainstays King Bee and Deep Eddy Cabaret alike illustrate the novel’s fictional Rush Creek Saloon.
“It’s about music in Austin in the Seventies,” Collins says of the book, released in March via Penguin Random House. “But it’s also about faith and booze and the particular feeling you can have sometimes, like, maybe I just heard something divine in an electric guitar.”
While paying homage to Austin’s storied past, Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine asks questions about maintaining a small-town community feel in a growing city.
“Austin takes a lot of pride in this sense of community and, particularly, inclusivity,” Collins says. “How do you keep an inclusive community when you don’t control who’s in it?”
The Austin Texas Book Trail takes place at 29 local independent bookstores from April 12-13. Find all the participating bookstores at austintexasbooktrail.com.
This article appears in April 11 • 2025.
