With only three employees, the creators of the tiny Boston icon talk about growing a community, cosmic dreams and what they’d do with more space

I opened a bookstore for personal survival and to share my knowledge and love of books with my community (Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts). There wasn’t a dedicated independent bookstore in my neighborhood and instead of just wishing someone else would do it, I took matters into my own hands, asked for help, and made it happen.

–Kate Layte (owner)

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What’s your favorite section in the store?

John Cleary (bookseller): My favorite section is Fiction – the stories there are what got me hooked on books.

Katie Eelman (media and events coordinator): It’s hard to pick a favorite section, but I do love the New Arrival shelves. Seeing brand new, face-out books never fails to make me giddy with excitement.

If you had infinite space what would you add?

Kate: I hesitate to say more books – because I’m awfully overwhelmed with the knowledge that I’ll never be able to read all the books currently in my store and I’m aware that there are many things that I haven’t discovered. So if you really mean infinite I would want to add an outdoor garden with lots of reading nooks, a rooftop bar with a space observatory, tumbleweeds, a small stage with blue velvet curtains for live events, a recording studio to produce and podcast our events, oh and some more practical things that I don’t currently have would be nice, like office space, a receiving area, and a dog.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Some more practical things that I don’t currently have would be nice, like office space, a receiving area, and a dog.’ Photograph: Jennifer Waddell

One little girl did get a paper cut from a book. Then her father came into the store and started laughing

What do you do better than any other bookstore?

Katie: We’re smaller than any other bookstore, and with only three people on the team, I think our community feels that they can get to know the shop and the people behind it. Our hope is that our neighbors learn about us, see how our tastes may align, and let us help them find new books. Because we have only 500 square feet, we simply can’t afford to stock books that we don’t like or feel excited about. I don’t know of any other bookstores that can say that.

Who’s your favorite regular?

Kate: I hate to pick favorites, but I’ve got a few. One is an older gentleman and voracious reader who spontaneously recites poetry that never ceases to amaze me. Yesterday it was Dylan Thomas upon seeing my displayed copy of A Child’s Christmas in Wales and last week was Wallace Stevens, upon seeing the new Banville. He’s a critical reader and will always fill me in on how a book was once he’s read it. He just read The Mare by Mary Gaitskill – he said it was “really very good. Not sentimental at all.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kate Layte, owner of Papercuts JP. Photograph: Jennifer Waddell

What’s the craziest situation you’ve ever had to deal with in the store?

Kate: I’ve been lucky so far, nothing awful has happened – one little girl did get a paper cut from a book, she started crying loudly and her mom was trying to quiet her down as I rummaged around for Band-Aids. Then her father came into the store and started laughing that she had got a paper cut at Papercuts. I found a Band-Aid eventually, but she was disappointed it wasn’t a Hello Kitty one and cried a bit more. I’ve since gotten cooler Band-Aids.

What’s your earliest/best memory about visiting a bookstore as a child?

Katie: I grew up in Doylestown, PA, an idyllic town outside of Philadelphia. Once, when I was very young, my mom took me a nearby book store for kids. When I was scolded by the bookseller for touching the books, my mom vowed never to go back, and from that point on we shopped at Doylestown Bookshop almost exclusively. She would let me spend as much time as I wanted in there, touching and smelling and stacking and restacking all of the books that caught my eye.

If you weren’t running/working at a bookstore what would you be doing?

Kate: I really like what I’m doing, but the nature of my work is that I’m interested in so many things! I’d like to study cosmology and give whale-watching tours, but I’d never want to give up slinging books. If I could combine them all somehow – that’d be ideal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Lauren Harms

What’s been the biggest surprise about running a bookstore?

Kate: How patient, kind, compassionate, generous, supportive, and encouraging everyone has been with me during my first year. People get a bad rap – but readers? They’re the best kind of people, and I’m so happy to have met so many this past year.

Katie: The wonderful and dynamic people we’ve met! They’ve been supportive from day one and have made so many dreams a reality, including the inaugural Papercuts JP anthology: What Happened Here, which we’re publishing on July 12, 2016.

The staff shelf

What are Papercuts JP’s booksellers reading?

Eileen by Otessa Moshfegh (2015). John (bookseller) recommends: “Set in a juvenile detention center outside of Boston, Eileen is a novel of obsession, madness, and violence narrated by Eileen five decades after the events of the story take place. Moshfegh writes with the poetic elegance of Lydia Davis and the gripping, emotionless turpitude of Cormac McCarthy, but is still uniquely Moshfeghian(her voice definitely deserves an eponym). This book is exhilarating and darkly witty, and I wanted to sink into each sentence but also felt propelled onward.”



(2015). John (bookseller) recommends: “Set in a juvenile detention center outside of Boston, Eileen is a novel of obsession, madness, and violence narrated by Eileen five decades after the events of the story take place. Moshfegh writes with the poetic elegance of Lydia Davis and the gripping, emotionless turpitude of Cormac McCarthy, but is still uniquely Moshfeghian(her voice definitely deserves an eponym). This book is exhilarating and darkly witty, and I wanted to sink into each sentence but also felt propelled onward.” The Last Love Song by Tracy Daugherty (2015). Katie (media + events coordinator) recommends: “This biography of the iconic Joan Didion is a superbly written work of research. Of course you know Joan from her provocative essays on culture, her careful novels, and her pieces that, as Daugherty says, ‘teach us how to live.’ Now, through this magnetic story of her life, know her fascinating western background and her reflections on writing her work. This stunning book is, I promise you, not your dry and merely factual biography. Daugherty traces Didion’s intellectual and creative growth, which is an opportunity that those who love to read and write would be remiss to forego.”

The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, ed. Quraysh Ali Lansana (2015). Katie (media + events coordinator) recommends: “Compared to the work of the breakbeat poets, the poetry you’re reading is outdated. The poetry in this book is not ‘modern’ in the sense of being more highly evolved, but rather a true and accurate reflection of a large part of our world that’s often neglected in publishing, especially in poetry. These pieces, with sound and rhythm that will move you (at least have your foot tapping), are not hindered by the expectations of structure or form. The poems in this collection are some of the most honest works of writing I’ve read recently – they read like a beat in the chest of the poet – raw, spontaneous, and simply written because it needed to be. The world needs more books like this.”