18 March 28th-april 3rd, 2024 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | that’s why we’ve been around all these years. Because every day is a new day when you have a local indie bookstore. You just never know what you’re going to face and if you have creative people who are working together and love what they’re doing, they figure it out.” Community impact But for every hardship, there have been countless moments of joy. Dach recalls store events with people like former President Barack Obama, a senator at the time, and feminist icon Gloria Steinem, “getting to work side by side with people who shifted and preserved democ- racy in our country, and I got to be in their world just for a minute,” she says. She also describes the excitement of the release party for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” in 2007, when 1,000 people showed up for the celebration. Shanks thinks about a 2023 event when Indigenous author Tommy Orange visited the Phoenix store and spoke before a crowd mostly composed of Native Americans. “One woman stood up during the Q&A and said, ‘I have never, never been able to meet anybody who has written about my life in the way you wrote about my life,’” Shanks recalls. “That was one of those moments.” She also thinks about the generations of children who have passed through the doors of Changing Hands. “When I see children in the store, I know that their worlds are expanding and diversifying,” Shanks says. “So the more we made the kids’ sections in both stores play places and happy places for children, the more they want to be there and the more they start their lives reading. “That was important to me from day one. And those kids have grown up and they now have kids of their own, and they have these special memories of those early days in Changing Hands, and they want those for their kids now,” Shanks adds. Quinn Illgen, who has worked at the Tempe location of Changing Hands for about five years, says the store is sustained by the passion of both the employees and customers. “I don’t see how else we would have made it without (the community). I book events, and if we didn’t have the people who were so invested in the authors that I brought in, I don’t know how we would keep doing it. And the people I work with, they care so much about books,” Illgen says. “It just feels like it’s everyone’s passion project, so I think that makes a differ- ence,” Illgen adds. TJ Newman has a unique perspective on Changing Hands. She visited the Mill Avenue and Tempe stores as a customer, worked at the Tempe location in 2010 and returned as an author to celebrate the debut of her New York Times bestselling novels “Falling” in 2021 and “Drowning” in 2023. “Any independent business staying open 50 years is impressive,” she says. “And when you think of everything that has rocked the publishing industry and you think of every- thing that Changing Hands has been up against, and that they’ve not only survived, but they’ve thrived, and grown and expanded during that, I think it just speaks to what they are and what they do. “Changing Hands works for the commu- nity, for the authors, for the readers and what they do is simple. It’s connection. It’s community. It’s belonging. And I think that’s something that people have always and will always crave and need in their lives.” For Shanks’ part, she remains grateful for five decades of Changing Hands being an inimitable, irreplaceable part of the Valley. “I’m shocked. I thought I was going to do this for a year and here it is 50 years later, and we’re still having fun,” she says. “We just feel so blessed that our community has supported us for 50 years. That’s all I can say.” later, and we’re still having fun,” she says. “We just feel so blessed that our community has supported us for 50 years. That’s all I can say.” From left, Changing Hands’ current owners are Gayle Shanks, Bob Sommer and Cindy Dach. (Photo courtesy of Changing Hands Bookstore) Chapter 50 from p 17
