Writer’s bookstore ‘the real thing’

Bill Henderson rode his bike to work last Tuesday. His car broke down the night before, when he was headed to a poetry reading in Brooksville, and he had to walk 4 miles back to his house in Sedgwick. So he rode his bike to work the next day and, by midmorning, was sitting on a wicker settee on the porch of his workplace reading a book about religion. He looked up from time to time to watch a boy playing with a string toy in a field, and he noticed when a 1917 Model T Ford chugged along taking kids for a ride.

Henderson is best known as the founder and editor in chief of Pushcart Press, a small literary press that collects outstanding new American writing in a well-known annual anthology of the same name. Local readers may also recall Henderson’s memoir published in 2000, “Tower: Faith, Vertigo and Amateur Construction,” about a tower he erected – partly out of need for a place to live and partly out of a spiritual quest – in Sedgwick, where he and his wife, Genie, who is also a writer, live in the summer. (He spends winters in East Hampton, N.Y.)

These days, however, Henderson has another building that is taking his time and thoughts. That porch he was sitting on is connected to a small, red-shingled shack on the back property of Sedgwick Antiques, on Route 172, near the junction of Route 175 in Sedgwick. The building was once a cheese shop and more recently it was the annex to the antique store. Now it is what Henderson likes to call “the world’s smallest bookstore.”

And, with measurements of 12 by 14 feet, the store is small. It contains a mere 600 books, but, if you consider the literary stature of those books, the store grows bigger with each title.

One wall has a shelf of modern classics written by Walt Whitman, John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, William Styron, Mary Gordon, Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Henderson hand-picked these

books at yard sales and library clear-outs. A second shelf is dedicated to Pushcart Press publications, including the annual anthology, as well as the best-selling “The Publish It Yourself Handbook” and winners of the Editor’s Book Award – works summarily rejected by other presses but worthy, in Henderson’s estimation, of publication.

The last shelf holds compilations by other small publishers such as Puckerbrush Press in Orono, the Ontario Review, BOA Editions and Bridge Works Press. Henderson called this group the writers and publishers the ones who “haven’t gotten the American consumer virus.” They are the real thing, he said, the authentic writers of our day.

“I’ve wanted to do this for a long time,” said Henderson of the bookstore. “This is a small store in the age of the big box. This is small, and I’m proud of that. The press is small, and I’m proud of that.”

Three weeks ago, Henderson had no idea, however, that his dream would come true – and more or less in his back yard. He and his dog were out walking one morning and wandered onto the property of the antique store. In the midst of a conversation with Bill Petry and Jill Knowles, who co-own Sedgwick Antiques, Henderson pointed to the modest shack out back. “That would make a good bookstore,” he said. The comment was more whimsical than entrepreneurial, but within 10 minutes, a deal was struck.

The antiques in storage were cleared out. Henderson painted the walls, laid plastic above the ceiling to stop leakage and placed a braided rug, from a friend’s bookstore, on the floor. He moved his Olivetti manual typewriter onto the desk, hung out a shingle designating the place as Pushcart Press Bookstore, and took his seat on the porch.

Now he’s there between 10 a.m. and noon every day except Sunday. He plans to keep the bookstore open through October, but weather, more than interest, will determine that.

“We’re trying to make Sedgwick a flourishing arts community,” Henderson said.

If you think small, he’s not so far off. Paul Sullivan, the composer and musician, has a studio nearby. There’s an art gallery down the road, as well as a tea garden, a market and, of course, the antique store.

“It was meant to be,” said Knowles. “It’s more fun to have like businesses together. Antique lovers and book lovers are the same people. We’re way off the beaten path but people who find us come back. When they find Bill’s store, they’ll come back, too.”

And if they do, it’s likely they’ll see Henderson sitting on the porch with his reading glasses in place and a book on his lap.