Around Indies

Dragonfly Books Set to Open This Week

A new bookstore is set to open in Decorah, Iowa, Decorah Newspapers reported on Tuesday. Owner Kate Rattenborg, who has a background in books and language, is fulfilling a lifelong dream by opening Dragonfly Books. Her daughters, Rachel, 18, and Sarah, 20, will be helping out in the store.

Rattenborg’s background is in language, business, and books. She received a B.A. from Luther College and a master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Iowa. Before deciding to open the store, she worked in finance and as a librarian.

Rattenborg chose Dragonfly – a symbol of renewal, change, rebirth, and the power of life in general – for the name of the store to honor her late husband, Steve, who died suddenly in 2002.

“Life is short, and you don’t know what is going to happen,” Rattenborg told Decorah Newspapers. “Instead of postponing a dream, just embrace it –and go with it.”

Founders of Politics and Prose Honored

On February 16, Barbara Meade and the late Carla Cohen, founders of the iconic Washington, D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose, were awarded the Lifetime Literacy Achievement Award by the Washington Literacy Council (WLC). Cohen’s award was accepted by her husband, David.

WLC, which was founded in 1963, serves adults who have the most limited reading skills, fewest job resources, and greatest employment needs in the District of Columbia.

Powell’s Recognized for Innovation

Powell’s Books, in Portland, Oregon, has been named the recipient of the Los Angeles Times’ 2010 Innovator’s Award, which “recognizes the people and institutions that are doing cutting edge work to bring books, publishing, and storytelling into the future, whether in terms of new business models, new technologies, or new applications of narrative art.”

Part of the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, the award will be presented on April 29, 2011, in a ceremony at the Los Angeles Times building.

Square Books’ Howorth to Receive Humanities Achievement Award

Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi, and longtime leader of the Oxford Conference for the Book, will be honored on February 25, at the 22nd Annual Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration.

Howorth, who is also the former mayor of Oxford and a past president of the American Booksellers Association, will receive Thad Cochran Humanities Achievement Award during the NLCC’s annual conference devoted to literature, history, film, and culture.