Nancy Olson Award Spotlight - Dominic!
Our Book Director was one of two booksellers (Jason Smith, Little Shop of Stories) given the Nancy Olson Bookseller Award!
At this year’s New Voices, New Rooms in Baltimore, Maryland, Dominic was honored in a room of his peers. Many tears were shed, many libations enjoyed. Read below to see his speech!
Melissa Taylor (Emcee):
Hello everyone. The Nancy Olson Bookseller Award is named for the late founder of Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina. Nancy was a legendary bookseller, a first class wit, a gentle soul, and a tireless supporter of writers, especially new writers looking to break into the publishing world. An anonymous admirer of Olson, in conjunction with SIBA, awards two gifts in her memory every December to make two booksellers' holiday seasons a little bit brighter. The award recognizes special booksellers who particularly excel in the areas that were important to Nancy: customer service and helping writers—especially new writers—reach their reading audience.
Our first winner of the 2026 award is Dominic Howarth from Book + Bottle in Saint Petersburg, Florida. So when Dominic was nominated for this award, the owner of Book + Bottle shared, "Many of our customers consider Dominic a mentor, both because of his amazingly kind spirit, but also because of his ability to help others shine. Whether it's a writer, another bookseller, learning the ropes of customer service and recommendations, or just how to be a good person, this award would mean much to Dominic, who puts everything he has into bookselling, serving his customers and helping others become the best that they can be." Give it up for Dominic.
Dominic Howarth, Book + Bottle
Thank you. You expect me to talk after listening to that? That is so beautiful. Okay, now, I have wanted to do this all day. Scream if you're from NAIBA! All right, now. Scream if you're from SIBA! (SIBA screams louder) Thank you very much.
This is such an honor to be here with you all and celebrating stories both written and oral, and I wanted to thank SIBA and NAIBA, even though SIBA did yell louder, for putting this on. Thank you. And for creating a space where our cups can be filled and our hearts championed. So thank you very much.
It was my mother who put stories into my hands. Yes. Give it up for moms! Give it up for moms and your mom, and your stand-in Mom, if you weren't lucky enough to have one. Whatever books I could get my hands on, she let me have. Whether it was Batman comics or Bradbury Bantam Classics. She brought this attention to my writing as well. I had lost a brother when I was five, and I wrote short, single-page stories about him going on adventures without me. And so in this way, I have always, and we have always, told stories to try and figure out the things we couldn't. When I got older, she would stay up way past my bedtime and edit my work, and we would split a Little Debbie's Brownie. Yes, I would take the walnuts off of mine, because, you know, gross. (applause) I knew I was in a room of my people. But this Little Debbie's Brownie was not dissimilar to eating the wafer in church. A fudgy piece of offering to the god of attention, and attention that says, you matter. Hanif Abdurraqib, in There's Always This Year, says anything can become a religion. It's only a matter of returning to it. And that was my nights with my mom. And that is the Writing Happy Hour at Book + Bottle. It's from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. every Tuesday, and it's been happening for two years. Book + Bottle is closed tonight while we are here, but it will still happen...because it’s not a place, but a people. A feeling. With Writing Happy Hour, I wanted to promise myself that, because I get off work at 4:00 p.m., I wanted to promise, "I will still write, and I will dedicate this time to return to it."
What is wild about this is that when you sit down, and there are seats obviously open, your world expands with every new chair at the table. Writing Happy Hour, by an approximation, has deliciously become its own pulpit. We have writers and customers coming in every single week saying, "I matter and my stories matter," and we create the space to make sure that it's true. It's a returning - not just to a place, but to a self.
I didn't know Nancy Olson, and if anyone did, I really mean this: please talk to me, because I would love to honor that legacy and get to let her continue to live on not just in an award, but in stories that I can continually tell. But I hope to live up to this award in her memory by continuing to cultivate a space committed to this constant returning. May you find your own constant returns, and may we continue to return to each other. Thank you for being booksellers.