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Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade of Politics & Prose
named 2010 NAIBA Legacy Award winners
In 2004, the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association established a Legacy Award in recognition of those individuals whose body of work contributed significantly to the realm of American arts and letters. Candidates for this award were to either reside in the region served by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association, or who created work that reflected the character of the geographical area so represented, and the spirit of the independent bookselling community found therein.
NAIBA has chosen Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade to receive the 2010 NAIBA Legacy Award. Watch some videos from the Fall Conference:
"We have built a community and the community has built the store."
Carla Cohen, founder of Politics and Prose, has partnered with Barbara Meade for 26 years. Carla and Barbara have been widely recognized for building an independent book store of distinction. Politics and Prose, under their leadership, celebrates the reading of books and the dissemination of ideas without fear or favor.
"Politics and Prose is nothing less than the bricks-and-mortar incarnation of traits we cherish in Western civilization: learning, tolerance, diversity, civility, discourse, inquiry, lyricism. For those of us lucky enough to live in the neighborhood, including those of us old enough to have lugged books across Connecticut Avenue from the old hole-in-the-wall location to the current shop, it's a port in the storm, a daydreaming hive, a bastion. Carla and Barbara have converted a life's work into a national treasure. How lucky we are to be patrons, browsers, espresso sippers, guest speakers, dear friends. Personally I have a good-luck ritual that I began in 1988: on the day I finish the manuscript of a new book, after I've typed the final sentence, I go to Politics and Prose. I look forward to doing that for the sixth time before long. If you love words, it's the place to be." -- Rick Atkinson (An Army at Dawn; Day of Battle; In the Company of Soldiers; Long Gray Line)
When Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade first opened a small bookstore on Connecticut Avenue, NW in the autumn of 1984, they were its sole employees, except for one part-timer who worked at night. Their vision was to deliver "superior service and unusual book choices...[and ]...a gathering place for people interested in reading and discussing books."
Now Politics and Prose occupies an entirely new space on Connecticut Avenue, NW, with some 50 full-time employees, and is one of Washington DC's oldest and most popular independent book stores.
The bookstore is inextricably tied to the Washington community, reflecting the character of the community's interest in discussion and debate on everything political, both national and international and the community's far-ranging interests from art to cuisine, philosophy to history to a wide variety of fiction.
The richness of the P&P experience lies also in its unique relationship with authors and publishers, conducting book groups and hosting author talks that facilitate relationships among books, the authors and their audiences. What could be more important to the concept of freedom and a true marketplace of ideas than a bookstore that challenges us to expand our knowledge through the introduction of new ideas, discussion and debate.
Carla, a Baltimore native, has lived in Washington since 1963. She graduated from Antioch College in 1958. She received an MA in Urban Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. In her early career she worked for Congressman Henry Reuss (D-Wis), Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee, developing hearings on how cities can grow old gracefully. In the Carter years she was a special assistant to Assistant Secretary Embry at HUD, specializing in policies to help poor people find decent housing.
Barbara was born in Washington, D.C. and graduated from Sidwell Friends and Vassar College. She has an MA in Literature from American University. During the 1960's she reported on the District of Columbia's public schools for Susan Stamberg's Kaleidoscope on WAMU. She entered the book business in 1978 at Moonstone Booksellers at Washington Circle, after which she owned her own bookstore, The Bookstall, in the Maryland suburbs.
"For all my years in Washington, D.C., I have had what Chekhov referred to as a "simply constructed writing life." That is, there is the writing itself (in my case early morning) followed by the question of what does one do next. Well, there was raising a daughter. There was teaching at university. There were friends. There was going to the cinema with my wife, to Arucola Restaurant. But if I am to really look clearly and honestly at quotidian life, there was Politics & Prose. Mainly I live between a room to write in and the book store. I'm not saying I am there daily but I at least think about visiting the store daily and either make the decision yes or no. Barbara and Carla therefore are part of the emotional dimensions of daily life, and I might go so far as to say that they have on occasion appreciated my fealty----as they have appreciated it in hundreds of their loyal customers. Even if Barbara and Carla are not, some days, physically present, they are very much present. To state the obvious, each is utterly unique, differently elegant, impossible to describe--- in my life they are iconic figures. I love them both dearly. I am presently on a book tour, and each independent book store I visit, the very first ---without exception-- question I get is, "How are things at Politics and Prose? Please give my best to Carla and Barbara." There is simply nobody like Barbara and Carla--- originality has no rivals, as Chekhov said. You simply savor it." -- Howard Norman What is Left the Daughter Novel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
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