Neighborhood Reads
Whenever I talk to Seattle booksellers these days, after all the customary “What have you been reading lately?” greetings have been asked and answered, the conversation often quite literally heads south. The booksellers will lean forward, a serious look falling across their faces, and they’ll ask with some urgency, “Have you been to Grit City Books yet?”
Then they add, with even more intensity, “Oh, you absolutely have to go.”
It might seem odd that Seattle booksellers are infatuated with a 2-year-old bookstore in the heart of Tacoma’s Sixth Avenue shopping district. But when you make the trek down I-5 and visit Grit City, you can understand what the fuss is all about.
Every detail of Grit City Books feels deeply considered, from the cozy modernist fireside seating area to the shop’s rich dark brown-and-green color palette to the nook in the kids section where parents tuck in with their children to sample a picture book or two. The store’s surprisingly deep inventory leans toward titles from noncorporate independent publishing houses, but there’s also plenty of bestsellers, and gems are tagged throughout the shop with enthusiastic staff recommendation cards.
It is, in other words, a bookseller’s idea of heaven — and it’s no wonder that Seattle booksellers have been making pilgrimages and raving about the shop to their co-workers and peers.
Given its growing reputation, it’s a bit of a surprise to hear that none of Grit City’s three owners have prior bookselling experience. Co-owner Jeff Hanway explains that a few years ago, he and his husband, Kegan Hanway, faced a crisis of conscience. The pandemic and its lockdowns changed “how we think about community,” Jeff explains. Specifically, at a time when people were turning to online retailers to fill virtually every need, even as neighborhood businesses struggled to stay afloat, Hanway says it constantly felt like having to choose between spending with values and convenience. “We didn’t feel like that should be a choice that you have to make,” he continues.
“Kegan has been a voracious reader his entire life, and I fell back in love with reading in my 30s,” Jeff says. And so the Hanways started thinking about establishing a bookstore that filled a need they saw in Tacoma’s robust literary scene: “An unapologetically queer-owned and queer-positive space, but one that carries everything a general interest bookstore carries.”
Kegan’s career in technology and Jeff’s background in business operations offered a good foundation, but something was missing. The business plan felt a lot more real when the Hanways partnered with Kaitlin Chandler, an acquaintance of the couple. Though Chandler had never worked in a bookstore, she had spent her entire career working at all levels of retail — from management to customer service to product displays.
Things began to snowball as the trio daydreamed about “the bookstore that we wish younger versions of ourselves had,” Jeff says. To start, “that meant really upfront queer representation.”
Grit City has three large bays by the entrance that make up the store’s most-trafficked area. “Those are dedicated to bestsellers, staff picks and a section we call ‘Queer All Year,’” Jeff explains. “We wanted to be intentional and purposeful about highlighting queer stories all year long and not just during the month of June” for Pride.
With a winning philosophy in mind, the owners then set about sweating all the small details. Local graphic designer Ashley Schaffer established the shop’s color palette, designed its logo and created Grit City’s mascot George, an adorable cardigan-wearing nonbinary otter.
Pay close attention to the bookshelves at Grit City, and you’ll notice they’re not particleboard prefabs from IKEA. They’re handmade originals from Franklin Fixtures, the Tennessee-based business that built the bookstore featured in the 1998 Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan rom-com “You’ve Got Mail,” and they’re shelves designed for selling books — they tip the spine up at a slight angle toward the customers, to almost imperceptibly improve the act of browsing.
Grit City has developed a full event calendar, including a monthly drag story time and dance party with local drag queen Cleo Nova, a “Textual Tension” feminist romance book club and a “Surviving Dystopia” book club focusing mostly on nonfiction that imagines a better world.
Jeff explains that in lieu of readings, the shop typically prefers the intimate fireside chat format, which places authors in conversation with an interviewer in front of the shop’s fireplace. Grit City has also developed relationships with local authors, including poet James A. Pearson, essayist Jenny Bartoy and travel writer Kara Patajo, championing their work, collaborating with them on events and offering signed copies.
Any bookseller can tell you that brand-new bookstores often require a period of years to discover and refine their identity. But Grit City Books seems to have sprung up from the sidewalks of Tacoma fully formed, with an identity and culture that reflects its community. Is it any wonder why this relatively small shop with a staff of just four booksellers has a good chance of being your favorite bookseller’s favorite bookstore?
What are Grit City’s booksellers reading?
Jeff says, “In my short bookselling experience,” Gig Harbor author Matt Dinniman’s funny apocalyptic fantasy novel “Dungeon Crawler Carl” is far and away the book that wins over the most nonreading converts. “So many people come in and say this was the first book they’ve picked up since they’ve graduated, or that they’ve never read for pleasure, but they couldn’t put it down,” he says. “Anything that gets people excited about reading is incredible to me.”
One of Jeff’s personal favorite books is “The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet,” a cozy sci-fi novel by Becky Chambers. “She does an incredible job of balancing the tensions so there are stakes, but you’re not in a high-adrenaline state the whole time you’re reading,” he says, crediting Chambers’ ability to craft “incredibly complex and well-thought-out characters” as the key to her success.
Chandler says “Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil” by V.E. Schwab is “my favorite book of 2025.” The multiple-timeline-spanning fantasy novel about “toxic lesbian vampires” is “haunting and horrifying and beautiful and heartbreaking and wonderful.” On the nonfiction side of things, Chandler says Sarah Wynn-Williams’ memoir about working at Meta, “Careless People,” will fuel your antitech sentiments. “I couldn’t put it down,” she raves. “I needed to know more, even though every few pages I was BIG MAD.”
Kegan loves Cat Sebastian’s first contemporary-set romance novel, “Star Shipped,” which is about two rival actors on a beloved sci-fi television show who have to feign a friendship for publicity reasons, only to fall in love. He recently read an advance copy of Courtney Gould’s upcoming horror novel, “Until the Last Light Goes Out,” and said he can’t wait to share it with customers. “On the surface, this is a story about what you would do for the people you love,” he says. “But really, this is a story about what we would do to survive.” The Grit City staff are such fans of Gould that they’re hosting the launch party for “Last Light” when it’s published this October.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yakimaherald.com ’
