The Canio's Books Blog

What’s a bookshop with out great writers near by? Looking back over our first decade at Canio’s Books (founded in 1980 by Canio Pavone), we realize how rich we are in Sag Harbor to be surrounded by so many talented writers steadily at work in their studios.  The fruits of their many labors fill our shelves and have enriched us with many inspiring evening presentations.  Even just a short trip down Memory Lane gives a glimpse of what we’ve enjoyed over the last decade. 

Robin Morgan reading from her memoir Saturday’s Child.  In 2002, Budd Schulberg celebrating his friend John Steinbeck on the centenary of Steinbeck’s birth. Poets Star Black, Bill Knott & Eileen Myles read.  Poets Joy Harjo and  Edward Hirsch read. Photo critic Elizabeth Sussman speaks on the work of Diane Arbus. Journalist Amy Goodman draws our hugest crowd ever.  Farmer/poet  Scott Chaskey publishes This Common Ground; Tom Mathews ‘ Our Father’s War; and Robert Long’s Dekooning’s Bicycle  all published in one year!

Then there was our literary costume party at Halloween 2005. Guests included Anna Akhmatova, Colette, Dante and Simone DeBeauvoir, Edgar Allan Poe, and Femme De Plume among many others. Several ghosts writers hovered. We published our own collection Sag Harbor Is, a Literary Celebration in 2006 with Jim Monaco of Harbor Electronic Publishing. In 2007, poet Grace Schulman read along with Phil Schultz whose book Failure won a Pulitzer.  Our friend Lucette Lagnado published a brilliant memoir The Man in the White Shark Skin Suit.  More recently, poet Mark Doty read from his exquisite memoir Dog Years and  from his National Book Award winning poetry collection Fire to Fire.

2009 will probably be remembered as the year Sag Harbor finally became a novel, in the expert hands of Colson Whitehead. His reading was a tour de force and attracted a huge hometown crowd. Whew, and that’s just a brief sample of what we’ve had the pleasure to present. Looking ahead, we’re happy to announce the creation of a new non-profit Canio’s Cultural Cafe’ an effort to continue  and expand our events series in the years to come We hope you’ll join the effort and be a part of our literary celebrations.