Next month, the writer Ada Calhoun will be visiting a class I teach titled The Courage to Sound Like Ourselves. She’s the author of the new book St. Marks is Dead, which of course it is not. Dead, though, is St. Mark’s Bookshop, which closes this week. Calhoun has written a searching piece for the New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog that we’ll also read for class.

I once sold a small literary magazine on consignment at St. Mark’s. I shopped there sometimes, but mostly I browsed, which is what many of us did when we were in our twenties, since back then books seemed more expensive than they are. I last shopped at St. Mark’s in December, when I bought books by Dr. Seuss and Marlon James.