New Words to Close, Will Reopen in 2003 as Nonprofit

Like a chrysalis, 28-year-old New Words Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., the oldest continuously run women's bookstore in the country, will close on October 6 and reopen in a year as a nonprofit community-based organization dedicated to women and the written word. The new entity will be known as the Center for New Words (Bookselling, Nov. 13, 2000). In a letter to customers, the members of the New Words collective noted that "we have decided to close the store so we can devote all our resources to moving forward with a new plan that will benefit you... as well as future generations of women."

The plan came about as a result of more than a year of study funded by a $75,000 grant from the Ford Foundation. "We're really looking at this as a transformation," said New Words co-founder and CNW co-director Gilda Bruckman. "I looked at a speech I made for the store's 25th anniversary, where I said, 'We need to find a model that will serve the interests of our community. It's really a matter of reinventing a community institution.' We seem to have done it." She acknowledged that closing the store for a year before opening CNW involves "a sense of loss. As much as we want to view it as a hiatus, we're leaping into the future with great optimism. But it's a leap."

During the coming months, New Words plans to continue operating its phone line, its newwordsbooks.com Web site and its nonprofit New Words Live author series. Writers such as Dorothy Allison, Patricia Henley, Phyllis Chesler and T Cooper will appear in the series this fall at various locations throughout Cambridge and Boston, including the New Words Reading Room and Simmons College. New Words will sponsor a writing workshop with Ellen Bass this fall and will continue its live music, open mic and cabaret series.

Several women writers have volunteered to help the store raise money for CNW. Starting September 12, New Words launches a fundraising auction on eBay that includes six skeins of wool from sheep raised by Jane Hamilton, an outgoing message tape recorded by Dorothy Allison and a pair of sneakers from Cynthia Enloe.

Most of the bookstore staff will be unaffected by the change. "Two-thirds went off to graduate school this fall," said Bruckman, who is trying to find jobs within CNW for the rest. The collective will not be taking old files or throwing them away. Instead, they're going to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard, which is interested in preserving the material.

CNW will most likely be located in Cambridge, which is where New Words's largest constituency lives, although the directors are also exploring possible sites in neighboring Somerville. Whatever the final location for CNW, the directors would like to give women and girls, to paraphrase Virginia Woolf, "a room of their own," which will foster writing and creativity through workshops, conferences and symposia. They also want to provide access to materials by and about women and girls. "Our goal," CNW co-director Joni Seager said, "is to take the lessons and successes of the feminist bookstore/women-in-print movement into the 21st century. As the Center becomes more and more tangible, we would hope that publishers will see this as a positive force. Certainly we would hope to build a wealthier institution dedicated to the life of the word."