Jamaicaway Books is Closing

This letter came from Brian and Rosalyn Elder back in October. this of course means any future dates for poetry readings at the store and my plans to bring it more business came to a halt a while ago. My regrets extend to Valerie Loveland and Crhistopher Kain, two poets I planned to have feature at Jamaica Books in December.


Jamaicaway Books & Gifts
676 Centre St.
Jamaica Plain, MA
617-983-3204

We are letting you know that Jamaicaway Books & Cafe is beginning the process of closing it's doors. We opened in December, 1998 after totally renovating the store. Many of you may know that Brian Sandiford, my partner, did all the renovations. The high quality of the renovations spoke to our goal of creating a beautiful space in which to share our love of books, art and music to the Jamaica Plain community. We also opened with a mission, to try to break down some of the barriers that separate us racially, socially and economically.

We have hosted many interesting, entertaining and often provoking events during that time such as our book events with Walter Mosley and Sister Souljah, our Sunday Jazz Open Mike hosted by John Stein, the First Fridays hosted by Cornell Coley or the very popular First Thursday Open Mikes. A cornerstone of our programming was the group of events we hosted for children, from Tony Williams directing some of his young dancers in an excerpt from the Nutcracker to Carolina Gomez with her Spanish immersion storytime for toddlers.

Our latest initiatives, the series of books beginning with African American Heritage in Massachusetts: A Coloring Book and the J'Way Cafe specializing in "a cuisine of the Southern memory" were all very well received. The coloring book sold out 500 copies in less than nine months and many of you are waiting for the second printing. As for the cafe, although we can only open it on the weekend, our customers can't seem to get enough.

Needless to say, keeping all this going takes an incredible amount of time and resources. We have decided to close our doors in order to spend more time with our family.