Welcome to life in the Gutter! We try to offer our customers a lovely, clean, open and interesting bookshop with a touch of quirkiness – like the fake grass in our children’s department! Do pop in and say hello if you get the chance. Our bookgroups are a very popular feature of the shop – the photo below is taken on a Dublin Fringe night out in 2011. Other photos show our 2nd Birthday cake and the mulled wine and biscuits we serve at Christmas. An ongoing feature of ‘Life in the Gutter’ appears to be owner Bob embarassing himself so here he is dressed as Wally, with his pet bird ‘Nevermore’ for Hallowe’en and wearing a silly hat!
Events in the Gutter…
We’re proud to have held a wide range of events in the Gutter – here’s just a few photos from some of them… Above are crime authors Arlene Hunt, John Banville writing as Benjamin Black, John Connolly and Stuart Neville. Below – various audiences including a children’s storytime in the kids department.
Children’s book launches have included events for John Boyne, Anna Carey and Melvin Burgess. We have also worked with local publishers launching books for Sue Leonard and many others.
Below those we have audiences for the Dublin Book Festival as well as author Patrick Ness signing a T-shirt at his launch. Our children’s activities always draw a crowd and our Picture Picnic and World Book Day events in the nearby Wood Quay Venue were definitely highlights for us.
Culture Night
For Culture Night 2011 we hosted an art installation by Nicole Tilley in conjunction with White Wolf Projects. Her work uses sillouettes and paper cut-outs, as well as dressed dolls that explore our relationships with dreams, imagination and children’s book illustration. It was a beautiful and intriguing addition to the bookshop on one of Dublin’s most exciting nights of the year.
The Launch Party in 2009
Our official launch party took place in November 2009, shortly after we first opened our doors and we were delighted to welcome lots of local and not-so-local figures from the book world to the shop. Author and friend of the shop, John Boyne officially launched us, and is pictured below with our surprise guest of the evening, bestselling author Anthony Horowitz who was in town for something completely different. Photos by Marta Starosta.
