In 2015, Bridge Books founder Griffin Shea was looking for South African books. Books for his young children, and books for his own research and pleasure. He discovered that many titles were impossible to track down, and he ended up ordering many local books from overseas stores – just because those stores had them.

He set out looking for other ways of selling books. He started exploring around Johannesburg’s Park Station, and meeting dozens and dozens of book vendors who faced similar problems. Whether they traded on the pavement, in a hair salon, or in their own bookshops, they all struggled to get new, local books.

So he started delivering books in a rucksack, hiking across the city’s bridges to deliver books to informal traders. When his back started hurting enough, he found a space on Commissioner Street and opened Bridge Books in June 2016.

Bridge Books remains a small indie shop that focuses on African literature, but it also sells books online and runs a wholesale business that continues to supply small booksellers with new books.

In 2018, we started the Underground Booksellers walking tour, which introduces readers to new places to buy books in the city, while explaining to visitors the history of books in the city and the many ways that books are bought and sold in Johannesburg.

We are currently working with a wide array of partners in the city centre and the Johannesburg Development Agency to create a new Literary District, which will act as an umbrella for all the bookish events in the city, while creating a new network of Street Libraries and helping small booksellers with new training programmes.

Bridge Books

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