Howling Basset Books Is All About Community
by Gwenn Seemel
Lambertville is a town that famously has more dogs than kids, and now we have a new bookstore that shows its love for both.
The first inkling that Zohar and Lisa would be bookstore owners one day came in 2008, when a shop in their Brooklyn neighborhood went up for sale. At the time, both Zhoar and Lisa were academics whose appreciation for a good story had been honed through their work in the media and communications departments of the various universities where they taught. Suddenly the idea of forming a community space around reading sparked their imagination.
Flip forward a few chapters in the tome of their lives and the couple had moved to rural New Jersey. In 2022, looking to push back against our society’s ever-increasing social isolation and foster queer community, they founded Howling Basset Books, in Oldwick, NJ.
By that point, Zohar and Lisa had been Basset Hound people for some time, an identity they came to unexpectedly via an appreciation for ferrets. Lisa had had these domesticated polecats as pets in the past and she was getting ready to adopt one again, when that creature got very sick. The next day, she happened to look on Craigslist where she discovered that someone was giving away a Basset Hound named Stella. Zohar described these long-bodied canines as “the most ferret-like dog,” adding with a laugh that it only made sense to rescue Stella.
In the first edition of their bookstore in Oldwick, the couple’s second Basset Hound—whom they’d also named Stella at the insistence of their then four-year-old daughter—prompted the business name and became the shop’s mascot. Today, their daughter is getting ready to attend high school in the Delaware River Towns area, which is part of what inspired the family’s move to Lambertville, and Zohar and Lisa are on their third Basset Hound. Fern is named after the human protagonist in Charlotte’s Web, and she’s the store’s official greeter.
Earlier this month, the new Lambertville space opened in medias res, plunging us straight into the action with a full docket of events. That includes a talk by the author of the YA novel Ollie in Between, Jess Callans, about writing queer joy in children’s fiction at 6 PM on June 21st, and, on July 27th, Howling Basset will host the first Lambertville meeting of its LGBTQ+ book club, focusing on Ocean Vuong’s newest release, The Emperor of Gladness.
With some of the shelving on wheels so that it can easily be tucked away, the store is set up to “transform into a salon,” as Zohar says, making room for 40+ people at their events. RSVP on the bookstore’s website.
Howling Basset Books is located in Lambertville at 45 North Main Street, with the store’s entrance on Coryell. Its hours are Thursdays through Sundays from 11 AM to 6 PM.
Hey, you rule! Please leave a tip.