Room’s new owners, from left, Jes Lukes, Patrick Rothfuss and Gretchen Treu.
Gretchen Treu, one of the new owner-managers of A Room of One’s Own bookstore, first met Patrick Rothfuss 11 years ago, before the Madison-born author was a big deal. Treu, who was working in the cafe at the store’s former location at 307 W. Johnson St., saw Rothfuss speak at an obscure midnight panel — on dragons — at WisCon, the annual feminist science fiction and fantasy convention held here in Madison.
Rothfuss was carting around boxes of his first fantasy novel, The Name of the Wind (662 pages), and he offered one to Treu. “It was before the Quill Award,” Treu says in a joint interview at the store, referring to the 2007 award for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, which put Rothfuss on the literary map. “You were like, ‘I’ve got a box of books here. Do you want a copy?’ And you seemed like a really nice guy. And I read it and I was like, ‘holy fuck, this is a really good book.’”
Since then, Rothfuss’ books have sold more than 10 million copies. And on July 1, he became a “silent partner” in the store’s new ownership arrangement. The store was transferred from Nancy Geary and Sandi Torkildson (one of the original founders in 1975) to Treu; Jes Lukes, another employee; and Rothfuss.
On Rothfuss’ first visit to the store since the trio assumed ownership, the self-deprecating author doesn’t talk a lot about himself. He doesn’t mention his rabid fans, who are already lining up in the bookstore for a signing, or the fact that his second book, Wise Man’s Fear, debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times hardback fiction best seller list.
What Rothfuss wants to talk about is philanthropy and supporting a healthy ecosystem of independent businesses. Treu and Rothfuss have a delightful rapport, based on years of friendship and a shared love of books. They joke about the term “silent partner.” “He’s not that silent,” Treu says of the loquacious author. But he is “non-interfering,” she adds.
“We have talked a lot about picking up more on the intersectional feminist roots of the store, doing what we can to serve the community and reaching out to other communities within Madison that traditionally haven’t seen a lot of outreach from bookstores in town,” says Treu. “We are able to do that because we are building on such a rich history and a solid base of operations that we got from Sandi and Nancy.”
She’s excited about the store’s partnerships with programs that provide books to prisoners, Madison schools, the Wisconsin Book Festival and the Madison Reading Project, which gets books into the home libraries of children in underserved communities in Wisconsin.
Treu, 33, who grew up outside Mount Horeb, says books defined her childhood: “I used to live five miles out in the country and I would bike on these terrifying windy roads into town, go hang out at the library and I volunteered, and the minute I turned 14, they were like ‘cool, we can hire you now.’”
Meanwhile, Rothfuss, was prowling around bookstores in Madison. “I remember when that’s all I would do on State Street was go from bookstore to bookstore,” says Rothfuss, who is now 45. He studied English at UW-Stevens Point, and has been mostly based there ever since. “I’ve watched all the bookstores die in Madison. It’s happening all over. And it’s terrifying.”
Rothfuss is working with Lin-Manuel Miranda (star and author of Hamilton) on a movie adaptation of his trilogy. But he wants to talk about his charity, World Builders, which has an ambitious 10th anniversary fundraiser coming up Nov. 27-Dec. 11. “We are hoping to raise $10 million,” he explains. “World Builders rallies the geek community toward doing good in the world. We help raise money for charities that promote sustainable change and the improvement of people’s lives.” The group has raised close to $8 million for Heifer International.
“Heifer International will change a family’s life forever — for $30 a child will be healthy and happy and go to fucking school because of a flock of chickens. Heifer is sustainable; it’s like an avalanche of good moving into the future.”
Rothfuss says helping keep stores like A Room of One’s own afloat is part of the big picture. “Books are one of the remaining few egalitarian art forms. As in, anyone can write one and get it published, no matter where you come from or where you are. I was in small-town Wisconsin and now I’m an international bestselling author,” he says. “But writing exists because there’s an ecosystem that supports it, and good books arise from this ecosystem because there is a vast and varied playing field of people who are allowed to write and get published. There have been drastic changes in the economic environment that threaten the ecosystem of bookstores in the same way that global warming is screwing up our actual world.”
Treu says Room weathered the 2008 economic slump, in part, because Torkildson asked for help. “She asked people to buy five more books than they had the year before,” says Treu. “It galvanized people to say, ‘You’re right; we do need this bookstore. We do need it to survive.’”
Rothfuss believes the store is on the right track, but offered to help because he could. “This is a little thing I can do to help preserve this ecosystem. You could have done without me, but I’m glad it’s easier to do it with me,” he says. “And I realize that what I really want to do — because I’m lucky enough to have some power and position in the community — is I like building walls around communities that are in danger that need a little help. There’s a lot of good things that go through hard times. And if we’re not here to help each other out, then I don’t know why we’re here.”
