Gore said that events at Bound Booksellers will include writing labs, book clubs, and readings and signings with local authors, many of whom have already reached out to her. Local author/musician Jeff Crossan performs at Bound Booksellers' grand opening. Also, I live in a part of Franklin that didn’t have that small independent bookstore, so I thought there was an opportunity in the neighborhood to really connect with people through opening a bookstore.” “Bookstores have always been a very comforting and warm place for me, and books have always had a very comfortable, homelike quality.

“I think there was an idealistic thing that existed for me since the time I was young, thinking that I would open when I retired,” said Gore. Her mother loved books and had several graduate degrees, including one in literature, said Gore. Ultimately, she decided to open the bookstore both to serve a community need and as a way to revisit her lifelong attachment to books, which developed while she was growing up in a reading family in the mountains of Tennessee.

“I don’t know if the idea for a bookstore existed initially in our minds - it was more as a community hub for the local artistic community of singers, writers, and artists, but with the backdrop of a bookstore,” said Gore. But while offering events was always the goal, opening a bookstore wasn’t always necessarily in the cards. Together, they envisioned creating a place that caters to the local creative community, she said. Gore, the former interior design program chair at O’More College of Design in Franklin, has lived in the town with her husband, Chad, also a designer, and their three children since 2010. Owner Kelly Gore’s mission for the store, which is located in a 550-square-foot space in Franklin’s West Haven Town Center, is to “provide the community a small, locally owned ‘artisan’ selection of books and gifts in an atmosphere that is warm and inviting.” The books are the stars at Bound Booksellers, a new general interest bookstore specializing in well-bound books that recently opened in Franklin, Tennessee, a small town rich with local culture and the arts but in need of a community bookstore.

I Ate a Cicada Today by Jeff Crossan