About - Cairns

Joe’s office, aka the Water Closet, aka Bachelard’s Cabinet, aka the Weeping Room. Smells of espresso, newspaper, and bagels. Physically cramped, intellectually palatial. Guarded by a white stag. Speak, Friend, and Enter.

Cairns is a bookseller’s journal—an ode, a vow, a shop manual. The name came from the thought that what stone cairns are to the exterior world, books are to the interior. Both say, in a wilderness: you are here.

This project formed around the Reader in Residence at Perelandra Bookshop, the first artist residency dedicated to reading as a creative act. You can learn more about the program and our community in The Colorado Sun.

Subscribers help me keep the lights on, physically and metaphysically. I am truly grateful for your support.

Subscribe to Cairns

A portrait of the bookseller as a young prayer

People

Joe Deany-Braun

@deanybraun

Curator at Perelandra Bookshop in Fort Collins, Colorado. Creator of the Reader in Residence program, "your new literary dream job." (LitHub)