New Jersey Bookstore Crawl 2026 Recap & June Update
Plus: an interview with author Caitlin Mullen, five opportunities for local artists, and a new South Jersey stockist!
Hi there!
Before I get into it, I just wanted to give a little intro to orient our new subscribers who have joined us from the New Jersey Bookstore Crawl. Hi! I’m Kerri, I’m the founder of Jersey Collective and I organize the crawl! My friend Kristen did all of the branding for the event, and Rutgers University Press provided support as well (they also published my book).
This newsletter comes out once a month, and features a bunch of stuff at the intersection of New Jersey and creativity. I write everything myself (no AI!) and nothing is ever an ad or sponsored content (sometimes links to books are affiliate links for my Bookshop.org profile1). Every month, I usually share:
A link roundup of things I think are of interest, from events to articles
Updates about Jersey Collective: anything we did recently or have coming up, new products, vendor events where I’ll have a table, etc.
A day trip itinerary or a spotlight on a local business that carries some of our goods (sometimes both!)
A short Q+A with someone local who does something interesting
A list of locally-based opportunities for artists and writers, which is also useful for learning about upcoming events/art shows!
You can find previous issues to read using this index, which lists the people we’ve talked to by subject and has some other things we’ve shared listed.
I often share book-related stuff in here too, through a New Jersey lens. A few years back, I did a project called Jersey Collective Reads, a series of events with New Jersey authors, with my friend Courtney Preiss, author of the Monmouth County-set novel Welcome Home, Caroline Kline. Those are all archived as videos you can watch or listen to. I later co-hosted a series of episodes for the New Jersey is the World podcast where we talked to Jersey authors about their Jersey books. I’m really proud of all of those things and hope you’ll check them out!
I love putting these newsletters together every month, and I hope you’ll find it both a valuable resource and a fun read. Thanks for sticking with me!
-Kerri
New Jersey Bookstore Crawl 2026 recap
Here’s our 2026 recap, which also has photos and is laid out in a more attractive format, but I’ll also some data here. I think the number of participants in this year’s crawl was very similar to last year! We had over 4,300 bookstore visits reported (8.5% more than last year). Crawlers came from 301 different zip codes, and seven states (NJ, NY, and PA, of course, but also CT, MD, TN, and VA). There was a tie this year for the zip code with the most participants: between Hillsborough and Brick. Like last year, most people visited between three and five stores. And two people reported visiting thirty-nine!
This year, I added a new survey question for people who also participated last year. I wanted to know if they felt like they changed any of their book-buying habits in the last year, and if any of that might have been a result of the crawl. I was astounded by the answers: a ton of people reported that they no longer shop on Amazon, that they prioritize independent bookstores and Bookshop.org and Libro.fm, and some folks shared that they’d never been to an independent bookstore until last year’s crawl and now they are the only places they shop for books. The tangible impact on the bookstores was amazing this year as well. Some stores had their best sales day of the year (or of all time!) and everyone enjoyed meeting all of the new faces who came through their doors.
I’m so glad that most of the participants understood that this was the whole point: to, for one weekend, come together to intentionally patronize out local literary economy.
This year, we partnered with some other New Jersey businesses to bring some extra programming to the crawl weekend, and it was fun meeting everyone who came out for our kickoff event and our afterparty! I also built out an entirely new website this year, which I hope was helpful for planning purposes, and allowed me to have some fun, too, like with this “Steal My Crawl” series of guest blog posts, which I absolutely loved reading, and I really appreciate the time of everyone who took the time to put one together.
Of every project I’ve ever done, this is far and away the most popular one, and it’s kind of overwhelming at times, but I really appreciate your attendance and enthusiasm— whether you went to one store or 39 or any number in between.
Upcoming Events
I’m vending at Princeton Zine Fest on Saturday!
Saturday, June 20, 2026 from 11:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Princeton Public Library: 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton, NJ 08542
Come say hello, grab a copy of my newly published zine, and I’ll have the sticker machine with me—stocked with our book-themed stickers, so if you missed your chance to grab one during the crawl, here’s another opportunity.
Can’t make it to an event? Shop our online souvenir shop!
You’ll read more about Caitlin Mullen when you get to this month’s NJ Q+A, but don’t miss this essay she wrote for CrimeReads about the Jersey Devil, folklore, and mothers’ suffering.
I probably will have a hard time calling it anything other than “The Greenway,” or “The Essex-Hudson Greenway,” but New Jersey State Parks is allowing the public to vote on the official name for our newest state park until June 29.
I loved listening to this recent interview on Jersey’s Best Podcast with Jeopardy superchampion and New Jersey resident Jamie Ding.
Last month, I shouted out a musical based on historic events that took place in New Jersey as well as Conveyor Studio’s open studio event. I’m happy to report back that both things were so much fun! I only took these lackluster photographs, but I really enjoyed the musical (and if I hear of it being put on again, I will share) and getting the chance to check out the printing presses at Conveyor was really inspiring and fun.
I’m really hoping I’ll have a chance to check out this Princeton University Library exhibition, which features some revolutionary-era treasures from the university’s archives, sharing “a range of perspectives on the Revolution’s ideals and contradictions, its anxiety and violence, and its achievements and tragedies” across lines of “gender, class, race, allegiance, and status.”
Also hoping to make it out to this artist pop-up at Steady Hand Cafe in Bradley Beach, where an artist will draw you as a chicken!
Of all the “New York New Jersey” World Cup discourse, the transportation-related pieces have been most enjoyable to me. Recently, Alex Wolfe walked from NYC to the stadium, and documented it for the New York Times. NJ.com journalist S.P. Sullivan has covered this topic in video form. The New Yorker just ran a great essay called “How to Canoe to the World Cup in New Jersey,” a perfect headline.
I’ve heard there are still a few tickets left for Chris Gethard’s show at The Vogel at Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank this Friday, which will also feature comedian Greg Stone and music by John Cozz and the Wellers. See you there!
The Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, a new museum and home for the Bruce Springsteen Archives at Monmouth University, is now open to the public.
Newark Fan Village
Location: Newark, NJ
We were in Newark last night for another reason and decided to pop over and check out the Newark Fan Village. It’s in the former parking lot of Iberia, a restaurant in the Ironbound that closed after 50 years in 2023. The fan village is free, and there are giant screens, TVs, places to sit, food, drinks, Nasto’s ice cream, merch by the Nork! Project, and they are showing every match during the World Cup. Here’s where I admit I have never really been interested in soccer and only half pay attention if it’s on TV in my home, but watching a match in this atmosphere, where everyone was wearing their county’s colors and waiving flags, made it a lot more exciting. The fan village is only two blocks from Newark Penn Station and there are a lot of (paid) parking lots nearby as well as street parking. It runs until July 19, and I can’t wait to go back again!
Let’s hear from an interesting New Jerseyan! Interview has been lightly edited for space.
This month, I knew I needed to talk to author Caitlin Mullen, whose novel Heather was just released last week. The book is set in the Pine Barrens, and Mullen’s novel Please See Us, which came out in 2020, takes place in Atlantic City. I asked my friend Andrea Quinn if she wanted to ask the questions this month, because she finished the book before I had the chance to, and because I felt like there was a lot of overlap between Heather and Andrea’s interests and work—she produces and co-hosts a podcast called The Watchers, which started as way to talk about Yellowjackets and has continued to explore television and film (currently Widow’s Bay) and often finds a “Jersey angle” with whatever is being discussed. Andrea also wanted me to tell you that she had a pet raccoon as a child and her step-dad was a cranberry bogger, in case you doubt her South Jersey bona fides.
AQ: New Jersey is often (and unfairly) treated as a punchline or a shorthand, but your work is much more interested in its complexities and of areas less often represented in broader culture. How do you think about writing Jersey without reducing it to the version people expect?
CM: I think people tend to overlook how varied and rich the landscape, culture, and history of Jersey is. I try to write about New Jersey in a way that shows off some of that richness, places that both feel distinctly like Jersey to me but also have their own fascinating subcultures, their own unique dynamics. I hope to write stories that feel universal in terms of what the characters are going through but that also feel like they could only happen in the settings I’ve chosen for them.
AQ: Heather is so rooted in the Pine Barrens, a place that, for those of us who grew up around it, can feel both familiar but also almost mythic. How did the landscape shape the story as you were writing?
CM: The vastness and the density of the Pine Barrens felt like an important part of the story—in part a tale about two teenage girls having to very much fend for themselves in the “wilderness” of adolescence, in part a mystery that a young female chief of police is trying to unravel in a place where secrets seem to stay buried. I felt like the landscape mirrored the characters’ inner lives and their predicaments. The forests of the Pine Barrens feel both beautiful and unknowable.
AQ: Did the book begin for you as a mystery, with these women and their relationships revealing themselves as you wrote, or did you know from the beginning that you wanted to write about girlhood, motherhood, friendship, and the impossible choices women have to make, with the mystery becoming the structure to support that?
CM: I am always drawn first to writing about women’s inner lives and about the hard choices women have to make when their backs are up against the wall. The mystery came later, which added structure to the questions I wanted the book to ask about what it means to be a woman moving through the world both in the 1990s and in the present day.
AQ: What do you hope readers from New Jersey will recognize in Heather that readers from elsewhere might experience differently? And/or the reverse: What do you hope readers from outside the area will learn about Jersey from your book?
CM: I love reading novels in which I recognize a place or landmark—there’s a distinct pleasure for me in seeing something or somewhere I know show up in a book. In this case, maybe that is a landmark like Atsion Lake, the Batona Trail, or the Mullica River. My detective character also takes some side trips to Princeton and Sea Isle, which are of course very different from the Pines but may be fun for Jersey readers to see on the page. As far as readers who aren’t from Jersey, I’d love for them to get a glimpse of the singular ecology and beauty of New Jersey—we’re not known for our woods, but the Pine Barrens take up 22% of the state’s total area and we’re so lucky to have all of this protected land in the middle of our state.
AQ: Before writing Heather, what did the Jersey Devil mean to you? When/why did you begin thinking about the legend from Mrs. Leeds’ side of the story?
CM: I grew up knowing about the Jersey Devil and hearing about Jersey Devil sightings, but I never knew one of the supposed origin stories of the myth, about Mrs. Leeds and her many children: about how she cursed her thirteenth child when she thought about the burden of one more pregnancy, one more mouth to feed—and that it was her curse coming true that turned the baby into the Jersey Devil. The novel is in part, an exploration of motherhood and the judgment we place on women and mothers, so I kind of couldn’t believe it when I dug deeper into the myth’s origins and found, at its heart, one more story of motherhood and of a woman struggling with birthing and raising children in a culture that didn’t support her. Her tale felt like one more version of the women I was writing about in the book.
Highlighting our locally-based independent retailer partners who carry our products!
South Jersey Special
Location: Haddon Heights, NJ
I’m so excited to share that you can now find New Jersey Go Fish! as well as four of our sticker designs at the impeccable gift shop South Jersey Special (I’ve been told copies of New Jersey Fan Club are also on the way!). If you love well-designed, locally-themed or made goods, you’ll, like me, leave with your arms full.
Flemington DIY is looking for a BIPOC curator to put together a solo or group art show this fall, and is offering a $500 stipend and no gallery fees.
The Monira Foundation is accepting applications for its 12-month artist residencies, which awards artists “artists rent-free, non-living studio space for 12 months” in Jersey City, plus a stipend. Deadline: 6/12. Application fee: $15.
The New Jersey Play Lab seeks “New Jersey playwrights of any experience level” to apply for their All Exits imitative, which will provide selected playwrights with “dramaturgical support through the collective at New Jersey Play Lab and a minimally rehearsed, in-person reading with semi/professional actors, designed to help the playwright take the play to the next level.” Deadline: 6/15.
New Jersey State Council on the Arts is open for their 2027 Individual Artist Fellowships for choreography, crafts, music composition, photography, playwriting/screenwriting, poetry, and sculpture. Early bird Deadline: 6/25. Regular deadline: 7/2. (FYI: this whole process seems kind of daunting to me and I have never applied even though I know I should someday. BUT, they have a lot of information on their website and chances to get help with the application, and I know several people personally who have been awarded thousands of dollars from these grants to fund their work!)
Prototype 237 in Paterson is taking submissions for an afternoon activities series, held on the afternoon of September 19th as part of their six year anniversary party. They are open to everything including “small performances, workshops, classes, demonstrations, immersive experiences” that are between 30 minutes to an hour. Deadline: 6/30.
I compile this monthly list of New Jersey artist and writer opportunities from sources including social media and organization websites. Unless explicitly stated, I am not involved in organizing these events and cannot answer questions about them! Please click through the links to find answers to your questions or for points of contact.
Feel free to send me anything you’re a part of or that you see, either via email or on Instagram! I prioritize sharing in-state opportunities that don’t charge submission fees, or that charge nominal fees or take fair commissions and directly support local arts & culture organizations.
I have earned a grand total of $92 in affiliate income through these links since 2022, so, you know, really raking in the big bucks over here. But hey, I’m so glad people are buying and reading books!
Thank you for all you do! As a bookseller at an independent bookstore, the crawl was great for driving traffic and selling books! It was great to see how excited people were about finding new independent bookstores. You do good stuff!
Need to do this crawl asap!!