Talking Leaves on Elmwood is celebrating its "quinceañera" and there's a big 15th birthday party taking place on that iconic corner of Elmwood and Bidwell Parkway this Saturday (June 9). But the bigger news is that Talking Leaves has survived, not just 15 years on Elmwood, but 41 years on Main Street in Buffalo. 

The longevity of this small, locally-owned bookstore through a remarkably tumultuous time in the book industry is a testament to owner Jonathan Welch's tenacity and passion, as well as to the authentic literary soul of Buffalo. Perceived by many as a blue collar, beer-guzzling, sports-centric city with unsophisticated tastes, books and printing, publishing and poetry, reading and the literary arts are central to who we are.

Immediate evidence is the confluence of book-centric events over the next several days. The Buffalo BOOKfest, also this Saturday, will showcase locally produced books and broadsides, prints and posters, and lots of literary-centric hand crafts. It is hosted by the Western New York Book Arts Center (WNYBAC), an unassuming store front on Washington and Mohawk which houses a local treasure that is working hard to keep Buffalo's literary and print traditions alive through workshops, classes and events.

And what about the Buffalo Reading Invasion? I'll be on the shores of Hoyt Lake in Delaware Park with a book and a blanket next Monday at 7:00pm. One quiet hour with a good book in my favorite place in all of Buffalo sounds like sheer magic.

More evidence. Did you know that all the comics in the nation were once printed in Buffalo? The Queen City was considered a printing hub in the northeastern U.S. right through the 1960s. There is an amazing Poetry Room in UB's Lockwood Library that hosts a remarkable James Joyce collection, among much else. I know. I worked my way through three degrees there. The vault in our Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, one of the best in the nation, contains cuneiform, an astounding Audubon print collection, and literary treasures beyond imagination. My first job was as a page at the East Delevan Branch Library in the 1960s; I took a rare tour through the vault in 2007. Simply amazing, as are the Grosvenor Room and the Rare Book Room. Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald lived here, and nearly every major poet in the world, it seemed, came to UB while I was a precocious poet in the English Department during the early 1970s, drawn to Buffalo by the likes of Robert Creeley and Allen Ginsberg.

I know I tend to go on and on about books. But that's much of what my Buffalo - and my life - has been about. And I am not alone in my appreciation of Buffalo's literary pedigree. On June 7, the Buffalo Common Council unanimously approved an executive proclamation designating Washington Street, from Clinton to Virginia, as the "Washington Street Literary Corridor," citing Buffalo's "extraordinary literary history and legacy." Watch for banners to go up soon along that stretch of street that includes the Central Library, WNYBAC, the Just Buffalo Literary Center (host of Babel), Old Editions, and more. Call us the City of Good Readers.

In 1974, as I was packing my bags in Buffalo to leave for Bogotá, Colombia -- never to return, thought the 20-year-old -- to lead a library into the 20th century, Jonathan Welch was scraping up the ingredients to start a bookstore here. No need to say independent. Most were back then. He opened Talking Leaves on Main Street right across from what is now called the South Campus, fondly remembered by many as the only campus. A perfect location for a bookstore. It is now more than 40 years later, and that untidy, crammed-to-the-rafters, dream of a bookstore still thrives. More than half of the independent bookstores in the U.S. have closed their doors and left the market to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but not Talking Leaves. I came home a decade ago to find that, instead of closing, Jonathan had opened a second store in the heart of what we now call the Elmwood Village. Prescient, he attached it to a coffee shop.

When I returned in 2006 and learned that Canisius College Press was going to shut down, I wept. Lost would be beautiful books like Classic Buffalo: A Heritage of Distinguished Architecture, and a rich publishing history that helped document what we now treasure about this unique place. Joe Bieron, the chemistry professor who single-handedly created the Press, became my mentor and business partner as we jointly rescued this publishing venture by taking it off campus and renaming it Buffalo Heritage Press. Joe is now enjoying retirement, while carrying on his legacy by continuing to publish beautiful books about Buffalo and by Buffalo authors is my "day job."

From librarian to journalist to author to publisher...the only book-ish employ I have not enjoyed over the decades is that at which Jonathan Welch has excelled. Happy birthday, Talking Leaves!

Books are in our blood in Buffalo.