• At the South Seattle Emerald, Marcus Harrison Green says goodbye to Vickie Williams, the owner of a long-running Columbia City Bookstore:

The longtime owner of Seattle’s only black-owned bookstore, Lem’s Life Enrichment Bookstore, in the Columbia City neighborhood, was laid to rest in a funeral attended by more than 600 people, including local officials and community luminaries, and a large swath of the black community.

• Remember how I was complaining about the comics distribution monopoly a few weeks ago? Vanguard Seattle has a profile of a new independent comics distributor:

If you’re an independent comics creator in the Seattle region, Anne Bean wants to stock you. Bean—a comics writer, indie publisher and freelance writer—is launching Emerald Comics Distribution, a solo operation that will represent and distribute indie comics regionally.

• Shelf Awareness celebrates Secret Garden Bookstore's upcoming 40th birthday a few weeks early.

• Café Racer, which is home to the ongoing comics-drawing jam series Dune Night, is for sale. Whoever buys this coffee shop will forever be the hero of Seattle's comics community.

• Rare Seattle media job opening alert! Local news site Crosscut is hiring a staff writer.

• Seattle Public Library's own David Wright wrote about the best/worst storytime ever over at Literary Hub:

When we opened our new downtown library with its large auditorium, back in 2004, I stood looking up at the empty seats and immediately felt that I needed to do a story time for adults there. Ours is one of the most childless cities in the country. Every library has children’s story time. Don’t adults deserve the same? Our need for story doesn’t go away at a certain age. Not surprisingly, turnout has been good for over a decade, and spinoff programs such as ghost storytelling in bars are standing room only. Last year, I added another narrative element by pairing story readings with screenings of film adaptations in a program I called Page to Screen.

• The 2017 Man Booker International Longlist has been announced.

• Beloved food magazine Lucky Peach looks like it's folding in May of this year.