Matthew Williams
Bookseller by Affinity
Experience of independent bookselling began for Matthew Williams ten years ago, when he returned to the Highlands during university holidays and worked in the Dornoch Bookshop. Subsequently he did a stint in London but Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery provides him with a demandingly compact but unfailingly stimulating context as a bookseller.
His stall at the Poetry Library Small Press Fair carried a selection of material with an accent on artists’ books and publications which unite word and image powerfully and ingeniously. As one of the invited speakers at the event, he outlined the challenges and rewards of his chosen work.
One of the strongest sellers at the Fruitmarket Gallery bookshop is island magazine, hand-produced by Julie Johnson, who works at the SPL. Her current issue, ‘sight-lines’, printed in blue, grey and violet, contains a quote from Robert Morris: ‘simplicity of form is not necessarily simplicity of experience’, which very much applies to island.
Find out more about the Fruitmarket Gallery, including the bookshop, at their website: www.fruitmarket.co.uk
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