A Welsh bookshop has been awarded Independent Bookshop of the Year in Wales by the British Book Awards, for the second time, reclaiming the award they first won in 2020. Book-ish in Crickhowell has reclaimed the award since last winning the title in 2020 and now Emma, the founder of Book-ish, and Book-ish are back in the top spot.
Book-ish has been open since 2010 and in 2017 moved to a bigger and better shop, just five doors up Crickhowell High Street from where they began. It beat five other bookshops in Wales, including Cover to Cover in Swansea and Griffin Books in Penarth, you can read the full shortlist here, with the overall UK winner announced on Monday, May, 23.
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The competition celebrates bookshops that have really become part of the community and in November 2021 the Crickhowell community proved just how beloved the shop is by raising more than £25,000 in a week to help save it, with a big donation coming from Michael Sheen. Owner, Emma Corfield-Walters spoke to WalesOnline at that time:
“It has been really heartening for me and my team to know that there is so much love for us,” she said. “To have had that acknowledgement and so many messages. We’ve always tried to make sure Book.ish is at the centre of this community. I think this is confirmation for us that people know what we’re trying to achieve in the community and in the shop, and it’s great to know they don’t want that to go anywhere."
The store has a children's reading room, the Snug, an in-house event venue, the Loft, as well as a cafe that sells local produce from the Brecon Beacons. Firmly part of the community Book-ish holds book clubs, game nights, and quizzes and co-runs the Crickhowell literary festival.
They are also the official bookshop of the Green Man Festival and the pandemic saw the bookshop make the move to being online. Book-ish is now up against the nine regional and country winners to win the overall Independent Bookshop of the Year Award in the UK.
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