Wayfaring Booksellers finds its niche

Kaitlyn Delaney
Associate Editor/Photo Editor

Nestled in the front corner of the REO Town Marketplace is the colorful space of Wayfaring Booksellers.

Located at 1023 S. Washington Ave. in Lansing’s REO Town, Wayfaring Booksellers is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesdays; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays.

The Wayfaring Booksellers owners pride themselves on having a plentiful selection of books about LGBT stories, and authors that are a part of the LGBT community. Originally starting as a temporary pop-up, Wayfaring Booksellers has now become a more permanent fixture in the REO Town Marketplace.

After having pop-up shops in the Marketplace in November and December of 2021, partners Casey Holland and Eleanor Richards were able to become long-time residents of the building in January of 2022.

“My business partner and I both have experience working in bookstores leading up to this,” Holland shared. “It had always also been a dream of ours from childhood to have our own bookstore.

“We happened to meet at a bookstore that we both worked at together and talked about these dreams, and were like, ‘You know what, we’ve got someone else who has that dream; let’s just do this together.’ And so, we jumped into it, and also just the goal of really creating a very inclusive space, especially for LGBT authors and voices.”

Along with selling a selection of new and used books, they are also finding plenty of ways to be involved in the community around them.

“We are trying to specialize mostly in LGBT literature and bringing in LGBT authors,” Holland said. “We have a book club that spotlights queer stories every month, and we’re trying to do more queer-centric events and things like that. So that’s kind of the niche we’ve carved out for ourselves, is having a place where anyone can maybe find themselves on the shelf.”

For more information on the bookstore and its events, check out the website here.