The Portland, Ore., metro area is home to more than 60 independent bookstores of all shapes and sizes. Eleven indies will welcome Children’s Institute’s full- and half-day bus tours on June 12, and a whopping 66 indies are listed on the website of Portland Book Week, a June 6–15 literary festival that coincides with CI2025.
Welcome to Portland, an entrepreneurial wonderland that abounds in eateries, craft shops, and vintage boutiques. Of 11 bookstore owners and managers who spoke with PW about the CI2025 tour, everyone made note of small businesses and community neighbors on their streets or shopping plazas.
“We definitely have to support each other,” says Bry Hoeg, general manager of Powell’s City of Books, which unveiled a bookstore map mural created by local artist Ariel Piazza on Independent Bookstore Day. “You can leave our store, go in any direction, and find another bookstore.”
Two Powell’s locations are CI2025 tour stops. At the labyrinthine City of Books, sales manager Devin Simpson will orient attendees in the Rose Room children’s area, then set them loose to explore the multiple floors. “We have a robust tour system for schools and other visiting organizations,” Hoeg says.
Powell’s Books on Hawthorne is smaller than its flagship sister, with a quirky personality. “We’re located in an eclectic cultural hotspot for Portland’s hippie community,” says manager Jen Stonehouse. Stonehouse touts a growing all-ages events program, an in-store coffee vendor, and the historic Bagdad Theater and Pub across the street. She calls the overall mood “lively and infectious and artsy.”
Broadway Books, another venerable institution located near the convention center, prides itself on being “33 years in the same location and always 100% woman owned,” says owner Kim Bissell. She promises “a small but mighty children’s section” and a location in “one of the most diverse quadrants in the city of Portland,” with a focus on literary fiction and local authors.
For more regional bookselling history, CI2025 guests also can visit 50-year-old Vintage Books, situated across the Columbia River in Vancouver, Wash. In addition to school book fairs, Vintage specializes in new and used titles and nonbook items. “People love our card selection, because we’re selective in what we bring in—we carry 30–40 card lines,” owner Becky Milner notes. She’ll send tour guests home with an “I Found Maisie” sticker, even if they don’t catch a glimpse of Vintage’s elusive cat mascot.
Neighborhood vibes
Three Portland bookstores on the CI2025 tour focus on books for young readers. A Children’s Place, which celebrated 50 years in 2024, is under new ownership: last September, former proprietor Pam Lewis sold the store to longtime employees Ariel Matasar and Kira Porton-Jones, friends since high school. Lifelong Portlander Matasar muses, “I have very sweet memories of hanging out in the reading tub filled with pillows” at the store’s former location.
The Fremont neighborhood is “a walkable, livable, connected community,” Matasar adds. At A Children’s Place, “we facilitate author visits and give a substantial educator discount, and because of that, people come in after school. Visiting kids sit in the rocking chair and read—our hope is that everyone feels a sense of belonging.”
Spanish and bilingual bookstore Linda Letra, in Portland’s multicultural North Montavilla neighborhood, started as a popup and moved into a bricks-and-mortar space in September 2023. The store’s owner, former bilingual educator Rachel Kimbrow, says it’s “the only dedicated Spanish-language bookstore in the state if not the Pacific Northwest, and one of only a handful of multilingual-dedicated shops in the U.S.” She provides dual-language children’s titles, work from West Coast Latino authors and presses, and promising imports from Spain and Latin America. She’s also connecting with schools and supporting the Feria del Libro Oregon, a state fest highlighting local Spanish-language authors.
Green Bean Books, tucked into a one-story house in the Alberta Arts District, exudes coziness for its clientele and extends its tiny indoor space with an outside deck for events and conversations. “My favorite part of Children’s Institute is seeing how people organize their stores, how they do categories, what sidelines they have,” says Green Bean namesake and owner Jennifer Green.
Green is proud of the shop’s wall-to-wall-to-ceiling shelves for young readers and its themed vending machines, which include a mini-book dispenser and a compliment-generating “feel-good machine.” In time for CI, Green announces, “we have new T-shirts designed by one of our booksellers, with green bean vegetables having a parade.”
Across the street from Green Bean, booksellers can visit Love Spell, an astrology and tarot bookstore owned by Tara Alexander and Chance Jackson. In addition to more than 100 tarot decks and sidelines, “we have books on divination, a gardening section for the green witch, a children’s section, T-shirts, and jewelry,” Jackson says. Specialty candles are a significant sideline, and customers can schedule individual tarot and astrology readings. Amid the bookstore hopping, maybe there will be time for a three-card tarot spread.
Rainbows and roses
On another bustling retail thoroughfare in North Portland is Always Here Bookstore. “People come in and don’t immediately clock that we’re a specialty queer bookstore,” says co-owner John Hart. “We’re a neighborhood bookstore, except we have an important asterisk on the end that’s near and dear to us.” Hart and partner Rafael Hart curate a “robust children’s section” and strong YA and nonfiction shelves. They’re excited for CI2025 visitors to discover prints and stickers by local artists, plus plushies handcrafted by Portland’s own Gay Crochet Co.
Two romance bookstores round out the CI2025 tours. The Black-and-queer-owned Romance Era Bookshop started as a popup, tried “an office-size space in a co-op warehouse” in summer 2024, and now occupies a space in a multiuse retail plaza. Owner Ren Rice describes the shop as inclusive, with sex- and body-positive artwork. “We do offer kids’ books for free, but we do not sell kids’ books,” Rice says. “We put an emphasis on being a safe space for people to explore the romance genre.”
Grand Gesture Books, in downtown Portland, is owned by jack-of-all-book-trades Katherine Morgan, who’s a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association board member, a part-time Bookshop.org customer service pro, and director of Powell’s Books’ chapter of the national Well-Read Black Girl book club. Similar to Romance Era, Grand Gesture went from being an online-only shop in November 2023 to opening its bricks-and-mortar location in October 2024. “We have a robust YA section, plus a middle readers and early readers section,” Morgan says. The store also does a brisk business in stickers, bookmarks, and romantic sidelines.
Across Portland, bookstores from general interest to genre specific are giving the people what they want.
