Kemp Town Bookshop and Bookroom Cafe

Independent bookshop launches new website

By Victoria Hepburn

The independent Kemp Town Bookshop stocks around 10,000 titles covering everything from fiction to children's books, art, history, politics, travel, biography and a large environment and alternative living section. They also have a section of local new writing from the Kemp Town Bookshop creative writing group and journals including Breach, Succour and Resurgence. They pick each of their titles individually and stock the highlights among the many books published in each category every year.

Kemp Town Bookshop now have a website! The Orders section allows you to order a book via email which you may then collect from the shop or request to be sent by post anywhere in the UK or overseas.

Books can often be ordered to arrive next day - which helps if you have an essay deadline or just want to get your book as quickly as possible!

Besides books, there's a wonderful range of greetings cards and stationery - invitations, photo-albums, blank books, gift wrap, pens and a wide range of calendars and diaries.

The Bookroom Café serves a selection of delicious coffees, teas, organic hot chocolate, juices and smoothies. They sell yummy snacks and cakes, many of which are organic and the coffee is fairtrade too! Light lunches include freshly prepared sandwiches, bagels and Vicky's home-made soup of the day.

The Kemp Town Bookshop is a venue for courses, workshops and events, often with a literary focus. These are held in the Café which seats twenty people comfortably. Tables can be moved to create larger working surfaces; there are leather stools, but seats with backs can also be supplied. Audio equipment is available for courses requiring audio, and complete black-out facilities allow for the showing of slides, DVDs and films. The Bookshop has a regular timetable of evening courses and Sunday workshops on offer. These are usually literary in content: creative writing courses and poetry appreciation for example.

Currently, as part of the Brighton Festival Fringe, the bookshop are exhibiting wood engravings by Diana Bloomfield. The exhibition is free and is open during the shop's usual opening times.

Kemp Town Bookshop and the Bookroom Café has nominated Bookpower as the main organisation to which charitable donations are given. Customers are invited to contribute to Bookpower directly. Alternatively, contributions can be made via the bookshop (please enquire at the front desk). BookPower is a unique charity which subsidises affordable, unabridged editions of basic higher education textbooks for 39 of the poorest countries in English-speaking Africa, the Indian sub-continent & the Caribbean. The best, most up-to-date, international textbooks are chosen with overseas advice and sold only overseas, at a fraction of the cheapest UK prices. This also increases the volume of business for often struggling book-importers and booksellers in low-income countries. The BookPower website provides further general information.

Open Monday to Saturday: 9am - 5.30pm. Closed Sundays.

91 St George's Road, Brighton BN2 1EE [map]

(01273) 682110