Earlier this spring it was announced that the Penn Book Center would be ending its 57-year run due to financial struggles. When it seemed like all hope was lost, the store found a future in Matt Duques and his wife, Diana Bellonby, who purchased the Penn Book Center after moving to Philly. With a new set of owners and a resurgence of community support, the Penn Book Center appears to have a bright future ahead of it. I had the chance to sit down with Duques to discuss what it’s been like running the store so far, and what the community can expect in the months to come.
Caitlyn McGonigal: I saw that you bought the Penn Book Center during your move. What drew you to Philly?
Matt Duques: Family. We were already planning on moving here, we 
already bought a house, we knew where we were moving, we didn’t know the store was closing but we planned on opening a bookstore. So, family, and also we were kind of ready to be back closer to home where me and my wife grew up.
CM: What’s it been like joining the community? So many people came to support the store in person and online. The Penn Book Center has really been a cornerstone of University City.
Matt: It’s been great! There’s lots of supportive faculty and students. We try to meet with as many of those folks as possible. Initially, it was really exciting and fun, and now we’re at this stage where we’re trying to figure out the transition. Everyone’s back in school, and for us, our only hope is that those folks still continue to have an investment in the store and don’t sort of just feel like their job is sort of dying. We still need their support, particularly because we’re in between two Barnes and Nobles and there’s an Amazon depot around the corner, so we’re the total underdog.
CM: Speaking of meeting the community, I saw that there was an event where people got to come meet you guys and the past owners; how did that go?
Matt: It went really well! We had some faculty from Penn and Drexel in particular, lots of people who were just customers of the store for years, lots of writers, publishers, etc. It was a wide range of folks who were interested in the store, and then a lot of people came out who had worked at the store years ago–decades ago–and a lot of alumni who had been shopping here since they were students.
CM: You’ve been running the Penn Book Center for a little over a month now. How’s it been? What’s your favorite part of running it so far?
Matt: Thinking about the events, and the books we’re stocking at the store, and having conversations about that. Also thinking about what we can do with the store in terms of renovations, and thinking about new partnerships with other institutions. Starting this month we’re going to be featuring some stuff from the Franklin Institute because they have a new exhibit that’s coming out and it’s based on a book, so we’re going to see if we can get an event in the store organized around the book and also promote the exhibit. Stuff that basically falls in the category of new sales, new events, and new programs; we have a handful of those opportunities. Right now we’re sort of the unofficial bookseller for the poetry series at the Free Library on Mondays, so it’s fun to do those new projects.
CM: Is there a certain event that stood out to you or maybe something you’d like to do again in the future that you really enjoyed?
Matt: All of our conversations are great, all of our translation series are great. We would really love to bring in some big-name writers and thinkers. The store has historically done some really great events. We’d like to repeat those big events, and reach out to psychologists, social scientists, politicians, and get some big-name folks into the store.
CM: I saw in an article that there were some thoughts on rebranding to make it more of an open community space. Aside from events, do you have anything else that you’re thinking of?
Matt: Yeah! We’re gonna change the layout of the space a little bit, remodel, tear up the carpet, and make it a little bit more of a store that’s friendly for browsing. We’re gonna put a table upstairs for book clubs and classes. Then we’re gonna change the name, because it’s a store that has strong connections to Penn, but it’s confusing because it’s not the Penn Book Store anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time. We get people coming in every day thinking it’s a place to get T-shirts, but that’s not what it is.
CM: Have any names jumped out to you that you’re thinking of?
Matt: Yeah, we’ve had a lot of names. Some of them have been really good. We’ve decided on a name and we’re going to keep it secret, but it is a name that’s an idea from one of the booksellers in the store and a graduate student here. When we do the renovations we’ll do a new website, a new upstairs, and a new name; it’ll all kinda happen the very beginning of 2020.
CM: Philly is a hub for indie bookstores and indie writers, have you been able to experience that?
Matt: We’ve known that for a long time, and I’d say we’ve been to all the bookstores in Philly. The only place we really go to for events–my wife and I–is the Free Library and our store, but we know that lots of other stores are doing good events, and we have certainly been consumers and customers at almost every bookstore. And in particular we’ve seen a lot of the new ones, like Uncle Bobbie’s and A Novel Idea. We try to get around and do a bookstore crawl.
CM: More of a general question, what kind of books do you like, or do you have a favorite author that you’d like to bring to the store?
Matt: That’s a great question. We’re working really hard right now on bringing Valeria Luiselli to the store. We both like her work. We’re really aiming to keep doing some events that are organized around popular fiction and poetry, and academic and scholarly talks. We’re gonna do a lot more young adult and children’s stuff on the weekends in particular. It would be cool on the children’s side to see if we could get Sandra Boynton into the store for a children’s event. Colom McCann is a novelist whose work I like; he has a new novel coming out; we’d like to have him come to the store. Imani Perry has done events at the store a bunch of times, and we’re trying to see if she’ll come in the spring. We’re on the lookout for some other people, from people in the community, like ‘Who do you want to come to the store? Let’s see if we can get that person.’
CM: Do you have anything you’d like to tell the community?
Matt: Come out and support the store, whether that’s through a reading event, through buying books, or through just coming in and looking at what we have. It’s going to be a much prettier and more communal space just on the other side of 2019 and 2020. Basically, after the students come back from winter break, renovations should be nearly complete. The other thing I would say is part of our effort to make it a more communal space is it’s important that people know we changed the way business is running at the store. In order to make ends meet, the previous owners really had to cut back on salaries and wages, so we have given everyone in the store considerable raises because there are people who have been working in the store for over ten years and there are people who have been working for over a year, and we would like to keep people long-term in the store. I think it’s important that people know that even though the bookstore business is not a profitable business, it’s our mission to keep everyone who works in the store feeling like they’re being paid adequately. We don’t get anything out of it ourselves other than the enjoyment of running a bookstore.
Caitlyn is a junior at Drexel University studying Entertainment Communications. She is the founder and head of Philadelphia-based music publication Ascribe Magazine, and writes for her photography blog Captured By Caitlyn in her spare time.