Lucy Atkinson imagined her future surrounded by books, but not quite like this.

After completing a PhD in English and Creative Writing, specialising in historical witchcraft in fiction, Lucy expected to continue writing and researching stories. Instead, she spotted an empty shop in the County Durham town where she'd grown up, realised it was the only thing Sedgefield was missing, and decided to open an independent bookshop.

In this episode of Bookshop Stories, Tom is with Back of Beyond Books to explore a question that sits at the heart of Lucy’s story: does spending years studying stories make you a better bookseller, or is it only through introducing books to other people that you really begin to understand them?

We talk about Lucy’s unusual route into bookselling, growing up with dyslexia and discovering stories through video games before falling in love with reading, why northern writers deserve a bigger spotlight, the responsibility of curating books for a community, and the challenges booksellers face in the age of artificial intelligence.

Along the way, Lucy explains why she wanted her shop to feel like a cross between The Traitors castle and Gilmore Girls, why her father was convinced the business would never work, how book-themed cakes have become one of the shop’s unexpected attractions, and why she's happy to spend her days helping other people discover great stories rather than writing one of her own.

It’s a conversation about books, certainly, but it’s also about creativity, curation, community and the many different ways stories shape our lives.

Books, authors and recommendations from this episode

• The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) by Sarah J. Maas
• My Friends by Fredrik Backman
• The Lady Upstairs by Jessie Elland
• The Pale Mistress by Naomi Kelsey
• The Wives of Halcyon by Irini Lapatecki
• Lizzie Pook, Lucy Rose and Neil Gaiman

If you enjoy Bookshop Stories, please follow the podcast and leave a review. You can also read my accompanying essays about the people and places behind each episode on the Bookshop Stories Substack.