Almost two years ago I came to work at Lemuria. On my second night of work we had a HUGE event celebrating the release of the book My Bookstore, and long time friend of the store Barry Moser joined us to read the essay he wrote for the book about Lemuria. I remember sitting in Dot Com, which was packed to the gills, beer in hand (you could drink at WORK?), marveling at how much this community swelled with pride to think that their bookstore was featured in the list of greats. I think that’s what got me more than anything: the ownership that our community feels towards Lemuria. It’s no longer just John’s bookstore, it’s yours.

You’ve seen us through multiple locations, an awful recession, what feels like hundreds of John Grisham releases, and the fight to make room for ourselves on the Internet. I can’t tell you how often you come up to the front desk to buy a newspaper or to pick up your First Editions Club book and tell me with a look of satisfaction on your face, “I grew up in this store. I remember shopping at Lemuria when you were still in The Quarter”.

So many independent bookstores all over the country have had to close their doors over the past two decades, and I believe it is a fate that we have escaped because of YOU. Because for so long you’ve believed that this store is important, that we have a positive impact on the community, and because you so value the significance of reading and supporting authors.

So I’d like to take the time today, a HUGE day for our bookstore, to say thank you. Thank you for investing in us, and for giving me the best two years of my professional career. Thank you for coming to signings for first time authors- authors who have now won Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards. Thank you for encouraging us and sticking with us during the two year process of publishing our book on Jackson, and thank you, thank you, thank you for your continuing patronage.

It is my pleasure to officially invite you all to an open house in Banner Hall tonight at 5:00, featuring the official release our new book, Jackson: Photographs by Ken Murphy. Ken will be joining us to sign the book in Lemuria, and Banner Hall will be rocking and rolling into the night. You can expect live music from Sam Mooney and Abigail Osteen , a pop-up art gallery from Art Space 86, $1 beers in Lemuria, and general good cheer towards our great city. We owe so much of this to you.

Written by Hannah

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. 

Stop by any of these local retailers to purchase a copy of Jackson: Photographs by Ken Murphy!

Ramey Agency

Fischer Galleries

The Crawdad Hole

Hickory Pit

Bella Ches

The Eudora Welty House

The Iron Horse Grill

The Rogue 

Mississippi Museum of Natural Science 

The Manship

The Fairview Inn

Turnrow Books 

Square Books 

Confetti Events

Let’s Talk Jackson from Frascogna Entertainment Law on Vimeo.

Steve Yates is winner of the Juniper Prize for his 2013 collection Some Kinds of Love: Stories (University of Massachusetts Press). In 2010, Moon City Press published Morkan’s Quarry: A Novel, and will follow it in 2015 with The Teeth of the Souls: A Novel.

I moved from the Ozarks to begin work in Jackson in 1998 at University Press of Mississippi. My favorite vista in Jackson is in the long courtyard leading to the Education Research and Development Tower (University Press of Mississippi takes up half that tower’s fifth floor). In that courtyard are six raised concrete bays in which reside the six most beautiful crape myrtles in all of Jackson. These bays abut Jackson State’s Universities Center and its Information Services Library on the east and dazzle the offices and back lobby of Mississippi Public Broadcasting to the west as the trees lead northward in a royal road of pink, olive green, mottled amber, and shredded taupe to the nine-story edifice of the Paul B. Johnson Tower. The best time to view them? In the resultant sauna following a morning, summer rain. The bark along the trunks always seems to be shedding in reptilian fashion, and rainwater flows in crystalline rivers along the exposed red and orange inner flesh. Pools of water, whole miniature nullahs accrue and tremble. And above you the boughs arch low, pendant with dripping, candy pink blossoms backed by light green struts and shot through with bright yellow stamen. Crape myrtles did not thrive and were never properly valued in the chilly, hilly Ozarks. When I have sent home via Facebook photographs of these six majestic canopies, my hillbilly correspondents and confreres have been mystified as to what sort of trees these could possibly be. They ask if I am on business in Borneo or on a holiday in Haorangi. Even in winter, the bare silver webs and mad chandeliers these giants raise up to the cold ivory and bureaucratic tan of the office tower make for a brilliant meditation and somehow suffice when I pine for snow and a touch of ice.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us in celebrating Jackson on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!