If you can believe it, Jess and I have quite a few work calls that devolve quickly into hours and hours of “but what MORE can we be doing with Charlie & Fox?”. And the one massive header that hangs over that “more” we’re always discussing is the concept of Bookish Community.
Heading into the year of 2026, there are no less than 5 documents that outline projects, plans and products that we want to achieve here at C&F with the Bookish Community at the forefront.
First stop: Seeing you all in person.
At the start of June, it was planned that Jess would come to the US, we would frolic our way through Imaginarium Book Festival in Washington D.C., and then head to Austin, Texas for the inaugural year of The City Fling as a vendor with Letters by Lila.
AND LET ME TELL YOU. IT WAS A DREAM.
The one thing about being a company that was born online, exists online and interacts with its audience online, is that you can easily forget that not everyone is…online.
Being in-person with everyone at both Imaginarium and The City Fling, quickly reiterated to us how important being physically with our community really is. The online bookish space was carved deeply by the global pandemic of 2020 - so many readers found their way back into the world of books and found connection with fellow lovers of literature in online spaces like social media. And I will be the first to admit that I love existing online, specifically because it means you can connect with readers from all over the world ( psssst Jess, I’m looking at you!).
But the experience of being in spaces where readers are wholly invested in cheering on their favorite authors, meeting their best friends in person and getting connected with writers and readers that otherwise may never have been shown on their feed - there truly is nothing like it.
Existing in the same room as some of my personal literary heroes, getting to hug people I’ve only ever DM’d for years, and chatting enthusiastically about loving stories was one of the greatest experiences I’ve had in my career with Charlie & Fox.
Our greatest takeaway? We gotta do this more often!
Not only do we want to make sure that there are chances for all the incredible readers we talk with every day online to see us in person, we also walked away with a thousand new ideas for how to make sure that Charlie & Fox can be a place of respite and support for the Bookish Community.
And while social media will always be a marker for how to find us, we are recognizing the age where algorithms can bury you, and therefore it’s up to us (the readers) to carve some alternative spaces.
So welcome to the Charlie & Fox Blog - “A Little Bit More”.
This will exist as a way for us to share more about happenings at C&F, our favorite reads, industry knowledge that is worth sharing, and truly anything else we can possibly think of with the goal of supporting the Bookish Community at the head of it all.
Thank you all so much for being here, and supporting the dreams of readers who make up the team here at Charlie & Fox. We couldn’t have done it all without you.
Xoxo
Jenna 💕
