Indie Bookstore Day

Bookmark, Charlottetown’s locally owned independent bookstore, is celebrating Canadian Independent Bookstore Day on April 25. This annual event highlights the spirit and value of independent bookstores.

Local booksellers also play a vital role in the Canadian literary ecosystem. They are conduits of discovery, champions of Canadian creators at all career stages, and help introduce Canadian readers to a diverse range of voices from across Canada’s rich cultural landscape.

This year’s celebration at Bookmark includes a chance to win a $1000 or one of four $200 Bookmark gift certificates. Visit indiebookstores.ca/cibd for the contest rules. Bookmark’s Spin to Win contest returns with chances to win extra points, swag, and product, or donations to the local food bank. There will be book swag and exclusive merchandise while quantities last, a blind date with a book, and double reward points on all qualifying purchases for Bookmark’s Reader Rewards Program (it’s free to sign up). Live music and more will round out the day.

Bookmark’s 2026 Bookstore Ambassador, local poet, author, and former publisher Laurie Brinklow, shares why she loves independent bookstores:

“You open the front door of the new Bookmark and you’re no longer on Kent Street, no longer in Charlottetown, no longer even on Prince Edward Island. Tiptoeing between those magnificent new shelves laden with magic rectangular boxes… you take one in your hand, crack it open, a smell sparks your nose… you read the first line and you’re suddenly transported through space and time. For me, bookstores are the original teleporter and TARDIS rolled into one.

“As a child, books took me everywhere. They were the constant in my life: my friends, my teachers, my mind-blowers… “Oh, that Laurie, she’s always got her nose in a book!” My mom says she put books in my crib, and I, of course, devoured them—literally. Maybe the words I ingested then are the ones that come back out now, on the page, in a different order…

“There’s nothing more joyous than seeing your book in the Bookmark’s window for the first time, or on a shelf lined up alongside other books [face out, of course!], or in a little magic two-dimensional rectangle along with all the other magic promises in the Holiday Catalogue. 

“There’s nothing like the feeling you get when you realize you’re part of a world full of writers.

“And where but an independent bookstore will you find stacks of poetry! Where but an independent bookstore will you find rows and rows of books about here!, and published here! Bookstores give us back to ourselves; they are our little culture mirrors that shine like stars in celebration.

“Where but an independent bookstore will you find so much creativity and beauty, inspiration and joy, a place to take you outside yourself? Where but an independent bookstore will you find the people who hold the keys to unlocking the teleporter? Where but an independent bookstore will you find the power to transform: a person, a community, an Island, a world?”