Brooklyn’s LGBTQ Book Bike Is Crowdfunding to Open a Brick-and-Mortar Storefront
In 2022, career bookseller K. Kerimian conceived of The Nonbinarian Book Bike, a trans- and queer-led mobile mutual aid initiative that distributes free LGBTQIA2s+ books for all ages throughout Brooklyn. The Book Bike made its street debut with a custom-built cargo bike from Icicycle Tricycles last summer and distributed more than 500 unique titles at park pop-ups and other events in 2023 alone.
With another distribution season coming to a close, Kerimian and the Nonbinarian team (which includes me, its newsletter editor and book club coordinator) are taking steps to expand. Specifically, they’re aiming to open a Brooklyn bookstore with exclusively queer inventory—the first of its kind in the borough.
On October 1, the Nonbinarian launched a Kickstarter aiming to raise $100 thousand to fund a holiday pop-up store for the end of 2024, as well as the initial rent, equipment, and inventory for its permanent brick-and-mortar storefront. Slated for residence in the Prospect Lefferts Garden neighborhood of Brooklyn, which has been a book desert since Greenlight Bookstore closed its location there last year, The Nonbinarian Bookstore aims to be a community space for trans and queer Brooklynites, similar to how Bluestockings Cooperative (a partner of the Book Bike) operates in Manhattan.
“Two of the core tenets of the Nonbinarian’s mission are ‘everyone deserves to see themselves on the shelves’ and ‘book ownership is a right,'” volunteer coordinator Alyssa Lo tells me. “By opening a bookstore stocking exclusively queer books and goods, we’re helping to ensure that Brooklyn’s queer community is guaranteed to find a story in our shelves they can see themselves reflected in.”
The Nonbinarian team is comprised of career booksellers like Kerimian, many of whom have over a decade’s worth of experience, as well as publishing professionals, marketing professionals, influencers, artists, makers, and readers of all stripes. The team is intimately acquainted with the competition provided by Amazon and other box retailers, as well as the competitive retail-rent market in New York—and it’s ready for the challenge.
“Opening a bookstore unto itself is already incredibly exciting, but I’m really looking forward to the store also being a community space. There are a lot of excellent organizations and mutual aid collectives in Brooklyn doing great work to support the borough’s LGBTQ+ community, several of which we’ve partnered with in our capacity operating as a cargo bike,” says Lo. “Having a physical space will allow the Nonbinarian to expand our programming, and I hope we get to partner with and meet many more folks through the brick-and-mortar.”
As for the Book Bike itself, it’s not going anywhere. In the Kickstarter description, Kerimian writes, “In providing a year-round space for our community, we aim to continue the work we started with our pop-up events and empower and affirm queer and trans people of all ages in a time of rising censorship and legislative violence. We will continue to offer accessible services, such as free resources, workshops, and events, as well as continuing the foundational work of the Book Bike’s mobile book distribution.”
The Nonbinarian operates on the tenet that “we take care of us,” which has been central since Kerimian launched the project for their 34th birthday two years ago. The team crowdfunded the bike itself and still relies on community support to maintain its storage unit, inventory, and bike upkeep. In addition to donating physical media, supporters can also subscribe on Ko-Fi, buy merchandise, purchase books from the Nonbinarian’s Bookshop storefront, and select the bike their store of choice on Libro.fm,.
But for the duration of the Kickstarter campaign, which runs until October 31st at 10:31 a.m. ET, the team hopes supporters will focus their donations toward The Nonbinarian Bookstore. In the first 24 hours of the campaign, the team raised nearly $5 thousand and earned the coveted “Project We Love” badge from Kickstarter. It’s offering two “early bird” discounts on exclusive merchandise tiers until Thursday, October 3, and backers can also pledge for stickers, bike multi-tools, custom book subscriptions, the ability to curate a shelf when the store opens, the ability to have their name painted on the store’s “founders wall,” and more.
And although the Book Bike and the planned Bookstore are located in Brooklyn, Kerimian still hopes to increase the project’s reach. As they said last year, they want to “bring this work to the most vulnerable populations and reach book deserts outside of cities. That’s a longer-term vision I hope to manifest over time.”
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