A Little Quieter, Still Here

I’m honestly not sure how April moved so quickly, but here we are, somehow talking about May.

May is going to be a little quieter on our end, mostly because everything is happening early in the month. Later in May, I’ll be busy growing a year older.

One more trip around the sun for me!

So we have two Quiet Reading Nights coming up, and then we’ll be back around mid-June with events as normal, including reading picnics, which I am very excited about!

As The Margins Club grows, I’m trying to get better at keeping track of the small things that help us grow well.

If you haven’t already, please follow our Eventbrite page and sign up for tickets there when you’re planning to come to an event. It helps me understand how many people are coming, how the community is growing, and how to plan better.

And honestly, it helps more than you know.

Right now, if you look at our Eventbrite history, it looks like barely anyone comes to our events. And if you’ve been to one, you know that’s not really the case. We have slower nights, of course, but people are showing up. They are reading. They are talking. They are making this little thing feel alive.

There are also QR codes on each table at Quiet Reading Nights. If you scan them, you can add the book you’re reading to our community bookshelf.

I still go around and take little videos of everyone’s book covers for the Instagram video reel because people like seeing what everyone is reading. I love seeing it too.

But not everyone has Instagram, and Instagram is not the best place to keep track of things. The community bookshelf gives us one place where the books can live.

You can add your book anytime at themarginsclub.ca. It doesn’t have to be during a Quiet Reading Night. You can add what you’re reading now, or go back and add books you read at past gatherings if you remember them.

And if scanning the QR code feels like too much of a hassle, all the links are on the website too.

I’d love to use our Eventbrite sign-ups and community bookshelf to grow the club in ways that benefit you. I want to ask local businesses, bookstores, and publishers for giveaways, free books, and little treats for the community. To do that, I need to be able to say, “Look, people are showing up. They are reading. They are engaged. Please give them nice things.”

So yes, please follow Eventbrite, sign up for tickets when you can, and add your books to the community bookshelf.

It really does help.

I’m also hoping to host an article club during the week of May 4 to May 10, somewhere other than Midnight Run.

There is also a possible collaboration that same week, which I’m excited about, so I’m trying to see what can fit without making the calendar feel too crowded.

Keep an eye out for those. There are a few good things quietly forming in the margins.

Scribble with us in the margins

If you would like to be considered for a future issue, share something with us. It could be a line you underlined, a short reflection, a shelf confession, a reading ritual, a story from the margins, or any piece of writing up to 200 words.

(A story from the margins might be a small moment from one of our events. Maybe you met someone new. Maybe a conversation stayed with you. Maybe the silence felt different than you expected.)

You can reply to this email, send a note to [email protected], or message us on Instagram at @themarginsclub.

Submissions will be thoughtfully curated each month, and selected pieces will be featured in the next letter.

Thank you for continuing to show up in whatever way you can ♡ !

Whether you’ve come to one event, shared a post, sent a kind message, added a book to the bookshelf, or quietly read from the sidelines, I’m grateful you’re here.

Wholeheartedly,

Nour