Meet Graham Naash and Wendy Ventricle, the curatorial crew behind the portable zine library we’re taking on the road with us. Independent librarians and collectors of all manner of literary materials for about ten years now,  they have worked together since meeting several years back through an internet chat room for bookworms.

After a long period of virtual bonding, they decided to meet in person. Graham was living in San Francisco at the time, where he was a member of a little poetry library that operated out of a hippie-run housing coop, and – it so happened – Wendy had already planned a trip there to research the infamous Beat Generation.  Their meeting appeared to be fated.  

Graham and Wendy hit it off so much that Wendy decided to join Graham’s little library and stick around SF for a while.  Not long after that, Graham and Wendy left the little library, because of political strife within its membership, and started afresh with their own library project, a place where studious people of all kinds gathered for homebrewed Moroccan mint tea, good reads and local literary entertainment. It was here that they really came into their own.  

Sadly, though, after a short but powerful stint of five or six months, just as their library was gaining a nice crowd of regulars and a solid rep, a mysterious fire burned up all their hard work.  Emotionally crushed, desperate, Graham and Wendy were driven apart.  

Thankfully, after a couple of years on their own, they found themselves reunited in Toronto, where they have decided to rebuild their collective library in the historical Kensington Market neighbourhood, at Methinks’ headquarters – Project 165.  

It has been just under four months now, and it’s proven to be a real challenge.  But Graham and Wendy are determined to make a successful re-emergence into the independent library game.

Graham and Wendy will join us for part of our journey to do field research and collect special publications for their new-and-improved library back in Toronto.

(Their efforts are made possible in part by the Independent Librarian Network of North America.)

- crew leader, Ringer