Always Here Bookstore, an indie pop-up with a temporary retail location in Portland, Ore., is not just a haven for bibliophiles, but a welcoming space for queer, trans, Latinx, and neurodivergent people of all ages. Married co-owners Rafael and John Hart, who both use they/he pronouns, intend Always Here to become a go-to source for books with LGBTQ authors and queer and trans content. Their store’s name comes from “the guiding principle that queer and trans stories are always here and have always been shared and told,” John said.
Rafael was the one who aspired to own a bookstore, and they learned the trade while working at Two Rivers Books in the Portland neighborhood of St. Johns. In April 2023, during a road trip through Salt Lake City, Rafael and John stopped at queer bookstore Under the Umbrella and imagined what it would be like to create a similar gathering place. “They have the proper merchandise area, and then they have community rooms you can book for your affinity group or your meetup or your D&D night,” John said. “It would be an absolute dream to find that kind of retail space.”
When they returned to Portland, the pair organized pop-up bookstore supplies in time for June 2023’s Pride festivities. Rafael took the lead as bookseller, and John helped set up at street fairs and markets. “I was a bike courier guy, so we offered free bike delivery of books, which was fun for Portland,” John said. “As it got bigger, we realized we needed a lot more labor than any one person can handle.”
By January 2024, they’d secured their current space, with Rafael managing the purchasing and operations, and John—the more loquacious of the two—developing partnerships with area schools and organizations including Pride Northwest, the bike-powered mobile library Street Books, and SMYRC, the Sexual and Gender Minority Youth Resource Center. Two Rivers owner Christine Longmuir kept in touch, providing mentorship and connecting Always Here with professional resources including the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association.
Rafael and John envision Always Here becoming a community hub akin to Portland feminist bookstore In Other Words, which closed in 2018. Books for all ages line their shelves, and they scour sites like journalist Dana Rudolph’s Mombian to find inclusive works for everyone from young readers to adults. In addition to supplying books for elementary school groups, “we have neighborhood kids who come to our store on the way home from school,” Rafael said.
John enjoys making recommendations: “I have this toxic trait where if someone comes in and says, ‘I’m having a bad time—can you recommend a book that'll make me feel happy?’, I’ll say, ‘Have you read A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers? That’s my feel-good existential crisis read.’” Other store favorites include graphic novel Beetle and the Hollowbones by Aliza Lane, horror YA Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White, and picture books No One Owns the Colors by Gianna Davy and illustrated by Brenda Rodriguez and From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea by Kai Cheng Thom and illustrated by Wai-Yant Li and Kai Yun Ching.
Always Here is growing its network of authors as well. At a July 30 in-store event, Portland author Sydney Langford will launch their debut, The Loudest Silence (Holiday House), the platonic YA love story of two queer, disabled teens who become a musical duo. Aiden Thomas, author of the forthcoming Celestial Monsters (Feiwel & Friends), will conduct a Q&A with Langford. Thomas has become a regular presence at the store, signing books with Tehlor Kay Mejia (Sammy Espinoza’s Last Review) on Independent Bookstore Day. “We’d done a personalization preorder campaign with Aiden’s novel The Sunbearer Trials when I was at Two Rivers,” Rafael said. “When we started this shop, I emailed him, and he’s been a huge supporter. Now we’re doing his preorder campaign for Celestial Monsters.”
On August 2, Always Here will host its first offsite event, a conversation between TJ Klune (Somewhere Beyond the Sea) and Chuck Tingle (Camp Damascus). Tingle is touring for his horror novel Bury Your Gays (Tor Nightfire), about a Hollywood scriptwriter whose studio bosses assign him to write the deaths of the gay characters in a hit streaming series. He and Klune will appear at Portland’s Clinton Street Theater, and the 200-seat venue already is sold out. “It’s going to be wild seeing us on the marquee,” John said. “When we first started putting up pop-up shelves in a tent on the street, we didn’t think we’d be working with an institution like that, and with Chuck Tingle and TJ Klune and Tor.”
Although Always Here presently shares a rental property with an entrepreneurial Asian American artists’ venture called Jelly Cup Collective, but the Harts are seeking a more permanent bricks-and-mortar home than their month-to-month lease will allow. “Amid this onslaught of political action against our communities," they wrote in a promotional statement underscoring their mission, "queer and trans folks need community spaces perhaps now more than ever—particularly space that is inclusive of the multiply marginalized: queer youth, disabled queers, and QTBIPOC folks."
