This past Saturday, New Orleans independent bookstore Octavia Books celebrated its 10 year anniversary, a milestone that was far from assured when married owners Tom Lowenburg and Judith Lafitte started Octavia in 2000. “When we opened, very few independent bookstores were opening, maybe a handful in the whole U.S.,” said Lowenburg. “The conventional wisdom was that you couldn’t do it. With big box stores and Amazon emerging into the field, it was certainly a scary time.”

Still, Lowenburg and Lafitte “refused to accept the paradigm that indie bookstores weren’t needed anymore,” he said. The reading and writing population of New Orleans has proven them correct, with loyal support throughout the decade and a big crowd at the uptown store’s 10th anniversary party on October16, featuring food from local eatery Café Degas, live music, and the announcement of a new program on local public radio station WWNO, “The Reading Life,” sponsored by Octavia. Hosted by author and former New Orleans Times-Picayune books editor Susan Larson, “The Reading Life” will cover the New Orleans literary scene, and incorporate the author interview series produced by WWNO veteran Fred Kasten, “The Sound of Books.”

According to Lowenburg, the station saw recent cutbacks in book coverage at the Times-Picayune (including the departure of Larson) as an opportunity to “distinguish themselves” by filling a hole in the local literary scene. Encouraged by Kasten’s recently-established but already-popular author interview series, the station entered into discussions with Octavia and Larson on how best to pursue the literary crowd; “The Reading Life” is the result.

Now in its eleventh year, the store doesn’t show any signs of slowing down in its on-the-ground support of the community that supports them; just two days after the celebration, Lowenberg was on hand at two different schools with author Scott Westerfeld, who spoke to students about literacy and read from his latest YA adventure novel Behemoth (Simon Pulse).

“The real success has been the support of our customers and community,” said Lowenburg, who sees the hard work of Octavia and other independent booksellers paying off. “I think there’s kind of a renewed recognition of the role that independent bookstores have,” he said. Saturday’s celebration proved that “there’s really a great outpouring of support for what we’re doing,” and provided a healthy indicator that Octavia is “going to be serving the community for a long time.”