The Sharing Experiment: Brooklyn’s Mellow Pages Library and Reading Room

Photos of Matt Nelson (left) and Jacob Perkins by Cameron Blaylock. 

Brooklyn has long been literary turf, but until a few years ago, writers wandering its industrial Bushwick neighborhood were likely seeking solitude. The area attracted hundreds of visual artists but lacked even a single bookseller. Reading series, a writers’ collective and four used bookstores gradually tucked in near art galleries and cafes; then in February 2013, the tiny Mellow Pages opened, in a small art studio. A tribe of about 300 readers, writers and fans quickly grew into a community who share their chapbooks, zines, extra coffee, beer and old furniture. Within four months, the small-press-focused free library upgraded into a stunning light-filled corner studio more than twice the size. I stopped by recently to talk with 26-year-old founders Jacob Perkins and Matt Nelson about the library…and, uh, my overdue book.

—Robin Grearson

I. Painting was too expensive

THE BELIEVER: How did Mellow Pages start?

JACOB PERKINS: Matt and I had the idea for a while and didn’t really have enough money or any means to make it happen. We had been collaborating on different stuff and the idea of a library had come up a lot.

BLVR: Collaborating?

JP: We wrote a bunch of these… they were called 50-50s. We designed a system of folding a paper so we could create poems from the inside out. We wanted to start something that was a place. I had this art studio, but I had pretty much stopped physically using the room. I was making art on the computer instead of painting physically, ‘cause it was too much money for material. So the space was kind of available. And we were out drinking one night and it was the middle of winter. Matt was like, I think I’m gonna move back to Seattle. I was like, wait, we could do something. And it kind of clicked in this moment. I had gone down to North Carolina and rescued all these books that my brother had there, from grad school.

BLVR: Rescued? Where was your brother?

JP: Portland. He had been at Duke, moved away and left all his stuff there. I came back with a rental car and, like, three to four hundred books that were all pretty tightly curated philosophy and political theory. That night we went out and were like, we should start the thing here, ’cause we had enough books, including Matt’s books and my books. We had absolutely no plan. We hadn’t thought of all of the systems for memberships or checking out or online cataloguing. Even after we opened, we were still figuring things out.

BLVR:...